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■ II 



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%])t Hit3er0itie ^literature ^ttitsi 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

AJSr ESSAY 



BY 

CARL SCHURZ 



TOGETHER WITH TESTIMONIES BY EMERSON 

WHITTIER, HOLMES, AND LOWELL, AND 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

OF CARL SCHURZ 




HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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l>v r\ (\ C\ 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Biographical Sketch of Carl Schurz .... 5 

Chronological List of Events in the Life of Abraham 

Lincoln 9 

Abraham Lincoln. By Carl Schurz . . . . .11 
Abraham Lincoln. Remarks at the Funeral Services 
held in Concord, April 19, 1865. By Ralph Waldo 

Emerson 77 

The Emancipation Group. By John Greenleaf Whittier 84 
For the Services in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Bos- 
ton, June 1, 1865. By Oliver Wendell Holmes . 86 
Extract from the Ode recited at the Harvard Commem- 
oration, July 21, 1865. By James Russell Lowell 88 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF CARL 
SCHURZ. 

It is interesting to note that one of the best 
studies of an American statesman and the best brief 
summary of Abraham Lincoln's career came from the 
hand of one born out of the country ; for the fact 
points two ways, — it indicates the hospitality of 
America, and it intimates how great a contribution 
the rest of the world is constantly making to the 
development of American life. We sometimes think 
and speak as if Americans and American institutions 
all sprang from the colonization which took place 
from England in the seventeenth century, forgetting 
that the nineteenth century has seen a far more exten- 
sive and more varied migration from all Europe. 

Carl Schurz was born March 2, 1829, near Cologne, 
Prussia, and was a student in the University of Bonn 
in 1848, when the revolutionary movement in Ger- 
many drew to itself many enthusiastic young men 
who thought they saw the opportunity for the estab- 
lishment of republican principles. The movement 
was quickly suppressed by the existing government, 
and led to the exile of some of the most promising 
men of intellectual powers. Many came to this coun- 
try and found positions in colleges and universities. 
One of the conspicuous men was Francis Lieber, who 
continued his academic life and was long a force as 
a political thinker and writer. Another was Carl 
Schurz, who, with more of the qualities of a public 



6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 

man, began at once, on coming to this country in 
1852, to prepare himself for active life. lie knew 
little or no English when he landed, but in three 
years he had so mastered the study of law that he 
was admitted to the bar in Jefferson, Wisconsin. He 
found himself amongst his former countrymen in the 
Northwest, and at once threw himself ardently into 
politics in sympathy with the movement against the 
extension of slavery. 

So rapidly did he come to the front that he was 
candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Governor of 
Wisconsin in 1857, and came within two hundred 
votes of an election. In the great debate between 
Lincoln and Douglas in 1858, he joined himself to 
Lincoln and took an active part in that political cam- 
paign. That was the beginning of his friendship with 
Lincoln ; and though as chairman of the Wiscon- 
sin delegation to the convention in 1860, he persist- 
ently advocated the nomination of Mr. Seward, he 
accepted heartily the choice of Lincoln, and from that 
time till the election was incessantly working for him 
and addressing political meetings. 

Mr. Lincoln set so high a value on Mr. Schurz's 
worth that he appointed him Minister to Spain. At 
the time, he was actively engaged in organizing the 
first cavalry regiment of volunteers ; and when after 
a few months at Madrid he returned to lay before the 
administration the result of his observation of the 
political attitude of European governments, he was 
appointed Brigadier-General, and a few months later 
Major-General, and served in the field till the end of 
the war. 

His clear intelligence of public affairs was recog- 
nized in his appointment by President Johnson as 



CARL SCHURZ. 7 

special commissioner to report on the condition of the 
seaboard and Gulf States. His report had great 
weight with Congress in its subsequent legislation, 
but Mr. Schurz made his political judgment still more 
effective in the years of reconstruction by his writings 
as a journalist. Successively a special correspondent 
of The New York Tribune and editor of the Detroit 
Post, he became in 1867 part owner and editor of the 
Westliche Post of St. Louis. So strong a power did 
he now become that in 1869 he was elected United 
States senator from Missouri. 

He was, however, a man who held firmly to what 
he conceived to be political principles when they came 
into conflict with party policy, and he threw himself 
into the movement known as the Liberal Republican 
party in 1872. In 1876 he returned to the support of 
the Republican party,* and President Hayes invited 
him into his cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. His 
administration of that office afforded a fresh illustra- 
tion of his application of political principles to con- 
duct. He had identified himself with the movement 
for the reform of the civil service, and being now in a 
position where he could put his belief into practice, he 
made the department a witness to the efficacy of the 
merit system, and gave a striking object lesson of the 
possibility of carrying on the government on this basis. 

At the close of Mr. Hayes's administration Mr. 
Schurz abandoned official life, and returned to jour- 
nalism, giving also a few years to business, but he did 
not abandon the public service. An independent in 
politics, he continued to give his powerful influence, 
in speech and in writing, on all the great political 
questions, maintaining a devotion to high ideals, so 
that it is doubtful if any private citizen in the last 



8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

twenty years has been listened to more attentively. 
When the seventieth anniversary of his birthday 
came, there was a large popular expression o£ grati- 
tude and admiration. 

One source of Mr. Schurz's influence may be traced 
to the singular ability with which he has made him- 
self at home in American political history. Another 
German, Dr. Von Hoist, has also shown this remark- 
able faculty, but Dr. Von Hoist has been especially 
a political philosopher ; Mr. Schurz has been a politi- 
cal historian, and his " Henry Clay," in the American 
Statesmen series, displays an intimate familiarity with 
the ins and outs of politics. He has written it from 
an American, not a German- American point of view ; 
and it is this identification of himself with his adopted 
country, illustrated also by his idiomatic use of the 
English language, while yet i^taining the power of 
speaking freely in his mother tongue to his former 
countrymen, which lies at the basis of his moral influ- 
ence. He brought an ardent love of free institutions 
with him when he came to this country, and he has 
always lived enveloped with this atmosphere while 
having a firm hold of the soil of American life. 

Slight as the sketch is which follows, it has a 
double value. It is a fine, discriminating analysis of 
Lincoln's greatness, couched in a strong, lucid style, 
and it reflects a habit of mind which political stu- 
dents may wisely cultivate : the habit, that is, of re- 
ferring political careers to standards of righteousness 
and not of expediency. Such a habit is of untold 
worth in a democratic country like America, where 
the disposition, inherent in the political consciousness, 
of accepting the judgment of the majority is liable 
to be misled into a too hasty following of the crowd 
which is making the loudest noise. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF EVENTS IN 
THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



PAGE 

Born in a log-cabin near Hodgensville, now Larue County, 

Kentucky February 12, 1809 

7 His father moves with Ms family into the wildemess near 

Gentryville, Indiana ....... 1816 

9 His mother dies, at the age of 35 1818 

10 His father's second marriage 1819 

17 Walks nine miles a day, going and returning to school . 1826 

19 Makes a trip to New Orieans and back, at work on a flat-boat 1828 

20 Drives in an ox-cari; with his father and stepmother to a 

clearing on the Sangamon River, near Decatur, Illinois 1829 
20 Splits rails, to surround the clearing with a fence . . 1829 

20 Makes another flat-boat trip to New Orleans and back, on 
which trip he first sees negroes shackled together in 
chains, and forms his opinions concerning slavery . May, 1831 

22 Begins work in a store at New Salem, Illinois . August, 1831 

23 Enlists in the Black Hawk War ; elected a captain of vol- 

unteers 1832 

23 Announces himself a Whig candidate for the Legislature, 

and is defeated 1832 

24 Storekeeper, Postmaster, and Surveyor .... 1833 

25 Elected to the Illinois Legislature 1834 

26-33 Reelected to the Legislature .... 1835 to 1842 

28 Studies law at Springfield ...... 1837 

31 Is a Presidential elector on the Whig national ticket . . 1840 

83 Marries Mary Todd November 4, 1842 

35 Canvasses Illinois for Henry Clay ..... 1844 

37 Elected to Congress 1846 

39 Supports General Taylor for President . . • . 1848 

40-45 Engages in law practice 1849-1854 

46 Debates with Douglas at Peoria and Springfield . . . 1855 
46-47 Aids in organizing the Republican party . . 1855-1856 

49 Joint debates in Illinois with Stephen A. Douglas . . 1858 



10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

50 Makes political speeches in Ohio 1859 

51 Visits New York, and speaks at Cooper Union . February, 1860 
51 Attends Republican IState Convention at Decatur ; declared 

to be the choice of Illinois for the Presidency . May, 1860 

61 Nominated at Chicago as the Republican candidate for 

President . . May 16, 1860 

51 Elected President over J. C. Breckenridge, Stephen A. 

Douglas, and John BeU .... November, 1860 

52 Inaugurated President ...... March 4 1861 

52 Issues first order for troops to put down the Rebellion, 

April 15, 1861 

53 Urges McCleUan to advance April, 1862 

53 Appeals for the support of border States to the Union 

cause, March to July, 1862 

53 Calls for 300,000 more troops .... July, 1862 

53 Issues Emancipation Proclamation . . . January 1, 1863 

54 Thanks Grant for capture of Vicksburg . . July, 1863 

54 His address at Gettysburg . . . November 19, 1863 

55 Calls for 500,000 volunteers July, 1864 

55 Renominated and Reelected President .... 1864 

55 Thanks Sherman for capture of Atlanta . . September, 1864 

56 His second inauguration ..... March 4, 1865 
56 Assassinated April 14, 1865 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

By carl SCHURZ. 

No American can study the character and career of 
Abraham Lincoln without being carried away by sen- 
timental emotions. We are always inclined to ideal- 
ize that which we love, — a state of mind very unfa- 
vorable to the exercise of sober critical judgment. It 
is therefore not surprising that most of those who have 
written or spoken on that extraordinary man, even 
while conscientiously endeavoring to draw a life-like 
portraiture of his being, and to form a just estimate 
of his i^ublic conduct, should have drifted into more 
or less indiscriminating eulogy, painting his great fea- 
tures in the most glowing colors, and covering with 
tender shadings whatever might look like a blemish. 

But his standing before posterity will not be exalted 
by mere praise of his virtues and abilities, nor by any 
concealment of his limitations and faults. The stature 
of the great man, one of whose peculiar charms con- 
sisted in his being so unlike all other great men, will 
rather lose than gain by the idealization which so 
easily runs into the commonplace. For it was dis- 
tinctly the weird mixture of qualities and forces in 
him, of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the 
uncouth, of that which he had become with that which 
he had not ceased to be, that made him so fascinating 
a character among his fellow men, gave him his singu- 
lar power over their minds and hearts, and fitted him 
to be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our 
national life. 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

His was indeed a marvellous growth. The states- 
man or the military hero born and reared in a log 
cabin is a familiar figure in American history ; but 
we may search in vain among our celebrities for one 
whose origin and early life equalled Abraham Lin- 
coln's in wretchedness. He first saw the light in 
a miserable hovel in Kentucky, on a farm consisting 
of a few barren acres in a dreary neighborhood ; his 
father a typical " poor Southern white," shiftless and 
improvident, without ambition for himself or his chil- 
dren, constantly looking for a new piece of land on 
which he might make a living without much work ; 
his mother, in her youth handsome and bright, grown 
prematurely coarse in feature and soured in mind by 
daily toil and care ; the whole household squalid, 
cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspirations. 
Only when the family had " moved " into the malari- 
ous backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and 
a stepmother, a woman of thrift and energy, had taken 
charge of the children, the shaggy-headed, ragged, 
barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, " began 
to feel like a human being." Hard work was his 
early lot. When a mere boy he had to help in sup- 
porting the family, either on his father's clearing, or 
hired out to other farmers to plough, or dig ditches, 
or chop wood, or drive ox teams ; occasionally also to 
" tend the baby " when the farmer's wife was other- 
wise engaged. He could regard it as an advancement 
to a higher sphere of activity when he obtained work 
in a " cross-roads store," where he amused the cus- 
tomers by his talk over the counter ; for he soon 
distinguished himself among the backwoods folk as 
one who had something to say worth listening to. To 
win that distinction, he had to draw mainly upon 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 13 

his wits ; for while his thirst for knowledge was 
great, his opportunities for satisfying that thirst were 
woefully slender. 

In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but 
little, he was taught only reading, writing, and ele- 
mentary arithmetic. Among the people of the settle- 
ment, bush farmers and small tradesmen, he found 
none of uncommon intelligence or education ; but 
some of them had a few books, which he borrowed 
eagerly. Thus he read and re-read ^sop's Fables, 
learning to tell stories with a point and to argue by 
parables ; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's 
Progress, a short history of the United States, and 
Weems's Life of Washington. To the town con- 
stable's he went to read the Revised Statutes of Indi- 
ana. Every printed page that fell into his hands he 
would greedily devour, and his family and friends 
watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after 
his daily work, crouched in a corner of the log cabin 
or outside under a tree, absorbed in a book while 
munching his supper of corn bread. In this manner 
he began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes 
he would astonish the girls with such startling re- 
marks as that the earth was moving around the sun, 
and not the sun around the earth, and they marvelled 
where "Abe" could have got such queer notions. 
Soon he also felt the impulse to write, not only mak- 
ing extracts from books he wished to remember, but 
also composing little essays of his own. First he 
sketched these with charcoal on a wooden shovel 
scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on basswood 
shingles. Then he transferred them to paper, which 
was a scarce commodity in the Lincoln household, 
taking care to cut his expressions close, so that they 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

might not cover too much space, — a style-forming 
method greatly to be commended. Seeing boys put 
a burning coal on the back of a wood turtle, he was 
moved to write on cruelty to animals. Seeing men 
intoxicated with whiskey, he wrote on temperance. 
In verse-making, too, he tried himself, and in satire 
on persons offensive to him or others, — satire the 
rustic wit of which was not always fit for ears polite. 
Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some 
of his pieces were even deemed good enough for pub- 
lication in the county weekly. 

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever 
young man, which he increased by his performances 
as a speaker, not seldom drawing upon himself the 
dissatisfaction of his employers by mounting a stump 
in the field, and keeping the farm hands from their 
work by little speeches in a jocose and sometimes also 
a serious vein. At the rude social frolics of the settle- 
ment he became an important person, telling funny 
stories, mimicking the itinerant preachers who had 
happened to pass by, and making his mark at wres- 
tling matches, too ; for at the age of seventeen he had 
attained his full height, six feet four inches in his 
stockings, if he had any, and a terribly muscular clod- 
hopper he was. But he was known never to use his 
extraordinary strength to the injury or humiliation of 
others ; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce 
justice and fair dealing between them. All this made 
him a favorite in backwoods society, although in some 
things he appeared a little odd to his friends. Far 
more than any of them, he was given, not only to read- 
ing, but to fits of abstraction, to quiet musing with 
himself, and also to strange spells of melancholy, from 
which he often would pass in a moment to rollicking 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 15 

outbursts of droll humor. But on the whole he was 
one of the people among whom he lived ; in appear- 
ance perhaps even a little more uncouth than most of 
them, — a very tall, rawboned youth, with large fea- 
tures, dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious hair ; his 
arms and legs long, out of proportion ; clad in deer- 
skin trousers, which from frequent exposure to the 
rain had shrunk so as to sit tightly on his limbs, 
leaving several inches of bluish shin exposed between 
their lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes ; the 
nether garment held usually by only one suspender, 
that was strung over a coarse home-made shirt ; the 
head covered in winter with a coonskin cap, in sum- 
mer with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape, with- 
out a band. 

It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior 
to his surroundings, although he confessed to a yearn- 
ing for some knowledge of the world outside of the 
circle in which he lived. This wish was gratified ; 
but how ? At the age of nineteen he went down the 
Mississippi to New Orleans as a flatboat hand, tem- 
porarily joining a trade many members of which at 
that time still took pride in being called " half horse 
and half alligator." After his return he worked and 
lived in the old way until the spring of 1830, when 
his father " moved again," this time to Illinois ; and 
on the journey of fifteen days " Abe " had to drive 
the ox wagon which carried the household goods. 
Another log cabin was built, and then, fencing a field, 
Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails which were 
destined to play so picturesque a part in the presiden- 
tial campaign twenty-eight years later. 

Having come of age, Lincoln left the family, and 
"struck out for himself." He had to "take jobs 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ' 

whenever he could get them." The first of these 
carried him again as a flatboat hand to New Orleans. 
There something happened that made a lasting im- 
pression upon his soul : he witnessed a slave auction. 
"His heart bled," wrote one of his companions; 
" said nothing much ; was silent ; looked bad. 1 can 
say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed 
his opinion on slavery. It run its iron in him then 
and there, May, 1831. I have heard him say so 
often." Then he lived several years at New Salem, 
in Illinois, a small mushroom village, with a mill, 
some " stores " and whiskey shops, that rose quickly, 
and soon disappeared again. It was a desolate, dis- 
jointed, half-working, and half-loitering life, without 
any other aim than to gain food and shelter from day 
to day. He served as pilot on a steamboat trip, then 
as clerk in a . store and a mill ; business failing, he 
was adrift for some time. Being comj)elled to measure 
his strength with the chief bully of the neighborhood, 
and overcoming him, he became a noted person in 
that muscular community, and won the esteem and 
friendship of the ruling gang of ruffians to such a 
degree that, when the Black Hawk war ^ broke out, 
they elected him, a young man of twenty-three, captain 
of a volunteer company, composed mainly of roughs 
of their kind. He took the field, and his most note- 
worthy deed of valor consisted, not in killing an 
Indian, but in protecting against his own men, at the 

1 Black Hawk was a chief of the Indian tribe of Sacs. The 
Sacs and Foxes made a treaty in 1830, by which their lands in 
Illinois were ceded to the United States, and the Indians were 
to remove beyond the Mississippi. Black Hawk refused sub- 
mission, and in 1832 appeared with a thousand men ; but a 
force was raised in Illinois which destroyed, dispersed, or made 
captive the whole body. — Ed. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 17 

peril of his own life, the life of an old savage who 
had strayed into his camp. 

The Black Hawk war over, he turned to politics. 
The step from the captaincy of a volunteer company 
to a candidacy for a seat in the legislature seemed 
a natural one. But his popularity, although great 
in New Salem, had not spread far enough over the 
district, and he was defeated. Then the wretched 
hand-to-mouth struggle began again. He " set up in 
store business " with a dissolute partner, who drank 
whiskey while Lincoln was reading books. The result 
was a disastrous failure and a load of debt. There- 
upon he became a deputy surveyor, and was appointed 
postmaster of New Salem, the business of the post- 
office being so small that he could carry the incoming 
and outgoing mail in his hat. All this could not lift 
him from poverty, and his surveying instruments and 
horse and saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt. 

But while all this misery was upon him, his ambi- 
tion rose to higher aims. He walked many miles to 
borrow from a schoolmaster a grammar with which 
to improve his language. A lawyer lent him a copy 
of Blackstone, and he began to study law. People 
would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying 
in the grass, "with his feet up a tree," or sitting on 
a fence, as, absorbed in a book, he learned to construct 
correct sentences and made himself a jurist. At once 
he gained a little practice, pettifogging before a jus- 
tice of the peace for friends, without expecting a fee. 
Judicial functions, too, were thrust upon him, but 
only at horse-races or wrestling matches, where his 
acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts 
undisputed authority. His popularity grew apace, 
and soon he could be a candidate for the legislature 



18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

again. Although he called himself a Whig, an ardent 
admirer of Henry Clay, his clever stump speeches 
won him the election in the strongly Democratic 
district. Then for the first time, perhaps, he thought 
seriously of his outward appearance. So far he had 
been content with a garb of " Kentucky jeans," not 
seldom ragged, usually patched, and always shabby. 
Now he borrowed some money from a friend to buy 
a new suit of clothes — "store clothes"- — fit for a 
Sangamon County statesman ; and thus adorned he 
set out for the state capital, Vandalia, to take his 
seat among the lawmakers. 

His legislative career, which stretched over several 
sessions, for he was thrice reelected, in 1836, 1838, 
and 1840, was not remarkably brilliant. He did, 
indeed, not lack ambition. He dreamed even of 
making himself "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois," 
and he actually distinguished himself by zealous and 
effective work in those " log-rolling " operations by 
which the young State received " a general system of 
internal improvements " in the shape of railroads, 
canals, and banks, — a reckless policy, burdening the 
State with debt, and producing the usual crop of 
political demoralization, but a policy characteristic of 
the time and the impatiently enterprising spirit of the 
Western people. Lincoln, no doubt with the best 
intentions, but with little knowledge of the subject, 
simply followed the popular current. The achieve- 
ment in which, perhaps, he gloried most was the 
removal of the state government from Vandalia to 
Springfield, — one of those triumphs of political man- 
agement which are apt to be the pride of the small 
politician's statesmanship. One thing, however, he did 
in which his true nature asserted itself, and which gave 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 19 

distinct promise of the future pursuit of high aims. 
Against an overwhelming preponderance of sentiment 
in the legislature, followed by only one other member, 
he recorded his protest against a proslavery resolu- 
tion, — that protest declaring " the institution of 
slavery to be founded on both injustice and bad 
policy." This was not only the irrepressible voice of 
his conscience ; it was true moral valor, too ; for at 
that time, in many parts of the West, an abolitionist 
was regarded as little better than a horse-thief, and 
even " Abe Lincoln " would hardly have been forgiven 
his anti-slavery principles, had he not been known 
as such an " uncommon good fellow." But here, in 
obedience to the great conviction of his life, he mani- 
fested his courage to stand alone, — that courage 
which is the first requisite of leadership in a great 
cause. 

Together with his reputation and influence as a 
politician grew his law practice, especially after he 
had removed from New Salem to Springfield, and 
associated himself with a practitioner of good stand- 
ing. He had now at last won a fixed position in 
society. He became a successful lawyer, less, indeed, 
by his learning as a jurist than by his effectiveness as 
an advocate and by the striking uprightness of his 
character; and it may truly be said that his vivid 
sense of truth and justice had much to do with his 
effectiveness as an advocate. He would refuse to act 
as the attorney even of personal friends when he saw 
the right on the other side. He would abandon cases, 
even during trial, when the testimony convinced him 
that his client was in the wrong. He would dissuade 
those who sought his service from pursuing an obtain- 
able advantage when their claims seemed to him 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

unfair. Presenting liis very first case in the United 
States Circuit Court, the only question being one 
of authority, he declared that, upon careful examina- 
tion, he found all the authorities on the other side, 
and none on his. Persons accused of crime, when he 
thought them guilty, he would not defend at all, or, 
attempting their defence, he was unable to put forth 
his powers. One notable exception is on record, when 
his personal sympathies had been strongly aroused. 
But when he felt himself to be the protector of inno- 
cence, the defender of justice, or the prosecutor of 
wrong, he frequently disclosed such unexpected re- 
sources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to 
such fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his 
hearers and make him fairly irresistible. Even an ordi- 
nary law argument, coming from him, seldom failed to 
produce the impression that he was profoundly con- 
vinced of the soundness of his position. It is not sur- 
prising that the mere appearance of so conscientious 
an attorney in any case should have carried, not only 
to juries, but even to judges, almost a presumption of 
right on his side, and that the people began to call 
him, sincerely meaning it, " honest Abe Lincoln." 

In the mean time he had private sorrows and trials 
of a painfully afflicting nature. He had loved and 
been loved by a fair and estimable girl, Ann Rutledge, 
who died in the flower of her youth and beauty, and 
he mourned her loss with such intensity of grief that 
his friends feared for his reason. Recovering from 
his morbid depression, he bestowed what he thought 
a new affection upon another lady, who refused him. 
And finally, moderately prosperous in his worldly 
affairs, and having prospects of political distinction 
before him, he paid his addresses to Mary Todd, of 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 21 

Kentucky, and was accepted. But then tormenting 
doubts of the genuineness of his own affection for her, 
of the compatibility of their characters, and of their 
future happiness came upon him. His distress was so 
great that he felt himself in danger of suicide, and 
feared to carry a pocket-knife with him ; and he gave 
mortal offence to his bride by not appearing on the 
appointed wedding day. Now the torturing conscious- 
ness of the wrong he had done her grew unendurable. 
He won back her affection, ended the agony by marry- 
ing her, and became a faithful and patient husband 
and a good father. But it was no secret, to those who 
knew the family well, that his domestic life was full 
of trials. The erratic temper of his wife not seldom 
put the gentleness of his nature to the severest tests ; 
and these troubles and struggles, which accompanied 
him through all the vicissitudes of his life from the 
modest home in Springfield to the White House at 
Washington, adding untold private heartburnings to 
his public cares, and sometimes precipitating upon 
him incredible embarrassments in the discharge of his 
public duties, form one of the most pathetic features 
of his career. 

He continued to "ride the circuit," read books 
while travelling in his buggy, told funny stories to his 
fellow lawyers in the tavern, chatted familiarly with 
his neighbors around the stove in the store and at the 
post-office, had his hours of melancholy brooding as 
of old, and became more and more widely known and 
trusted and beloved among the people of his State for 
his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the upright- 
ness of his character and the ever-flowing spring of 
sympathetic kindness in his heart. His main ambi- 
tion was confessedly that of political distinction ; but 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

hardly any one would at that time have seen in him 
the man destined to lead the nation through the great- 
est crisis of the century. 

His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was 
elected to Congress. In a clever speech in the House 
of Representatives, he denounced President Polk for 
having unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and he 
amused the Committee of the Whole by a witty at- 
tack upon General Cass. More important was the 
expression he gave to his anti-slavery impulses by 
offering a bill looking to the emancipation of the slaves 
in the District of Columbia, and by his repeated votes 
for the famous Wilmot Proviso, intended to exclude 
slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico. 
But when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 
1849, he left his seat, he gloomily despaired of ever 
seeing the day when the cause nearest to his heart 
would be rightly grasped by the people, and when he 
would be able to render any service to his country in 
solving the great problem. Nor had his career as a 
member of Congress in any sense been such as to 
gratify his ambition. Indeed, if he ever had any be- 
lief in a great destiny for himself, it must have been 
weak at that period; for he actually sought to obtain 
from the new Whig President, General Taylor, the 
place of Commissioner of the General Land Office, 
willing to bury himself in one of the administrative 
bureaus of the government. Fortunately for the coun- 
try, he failed ; and no less fortunately, when, later, 
the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to 
him, Mrs. Lincoln's protest induced him to decline 
it. Returning to Springfield, he gave himself with 
renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the 
Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 23 

reservation, supported in the presidential campaign of 
1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless speeches, 
and took but a languid interest in the politics of the 
day. But just then his time was drawing near. 

The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, 
by the Compromise of 1850 was rudely broken by 
the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. 
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the 
Territories of the United States, the heritage of com- 
ing generations, to the invasion of slavery, suddenly 
revealed the whole significance of the slavery question 
to the people of the free States, and thrust itself into 
the politics of the country as the paramount issue. 
Something like an electric shock flashed through the 
North. Men who but a short time before had been 
absorbed by their business pursuits, and deprecated 
all political agitation, were startled out of their secu- 
rity by a sudden alarm, and excitedly took sides. 
That restless trouble of conscience about slavery, 
which even in times of apparent repose had secretly 
disturbed the souls of Northern people, broke forth 
in an utterance louder than ever. The bonds of ac- 
customed party allegiance gave way. Anti-slavery 
Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs felt themselves 
drawn together by a common overpowering sentiment, 
and soon they began to rally in a new organization. 
The Kepublican party sprang into being to meet 
the overruling call of the hour. Then Abraham 
Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a 
position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. 
This, however, was not owing to his virtues and abili- 
ties alone. Indeed, the slavery question stirred his 
soul in its profoundest depths ; it was, as one of his 
intimate friends said, " the only one on which he 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

would become excited ; " it called forth all his facul- 
ties and energies. Yet there were many others who, 
having long and arduously fought the anti-slavery 
battle in the popular assembly, or in the press, or in 
the halls of Congress, far surpassed him in prestige, 
and compared with whom he was still an obscure and 
untried man. His reputation, although highly honor- 
able and well earned, had so far been essentially local. 
As a stump-speaker in Whig canvasses outside of his 
State, he had attracted comparatively little attention ; 
but in Illinois he had been recognized as one of the 
foremost men of the Whig party. Among the oppo- 
nents of the Nebraska bill he occupied in his State so 
important a position, that in 1854 he was the choice 
of a large majority of the " Anti-Nebraska men " in 
the legislature for a seat in the Senate of the United 
States which then became vacant ; and when he, an 
old Whig, could not obtain the votes of the Anti- 
Nebraska Democrats necessary to make a majority, 
he generously urged his friends to transfer their votes 
to Lyman Trumbull, who was then elected. Two 
years later, in the first national convention of the Ke- 
publican party, the delegation from Illinois brought 
him forward as a candidate for the vice-presidency, 
and he received respectable support. Still, the name 
of Abraham Lincoln was not widely known beyond 
the boundaries of his own State. But now it was this 
local prominence in Illinois that put him in a position 
of peculiar advantage on the battlefield of national 
politics. In the assault on the Missouri Compromise 
which broke down all legal barriers to the spread of 
slavery, Stephen Arnold Douglas was the ostensible 
leader and central figure ; and Douglas was a senator 
from Illinois, Lincoln's State. Douglas's national 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 25 

theatre of action was the Senate, but in his constitu- 
ency in Illinois were the roots of his official position 
and power. What he did in the Senate he had to 
justify before the people of Illinois, in order to main- 
tain himself in place ; and in Illinois all eyes turned 
to Lincoln as Douglas's natural antagonist. 

As very young men they had come to Illinois, Lin- 
coln from Indiana, Douglas from Vermont, and had 
grown up together in public life, Douglas as a Demo- 
crat, Lincoln as a Whig. They had met first in Van- 
dalia, in 1834, when Lincoln was in the legislature 
and Douglas in the lobby ; and again in 1836, both 
as members of the legislature. Douglas, a very able 
politician, of the agile, combative, audacious, " push- 
ing " sort, rose in political distinction with remarkable 
rapidity. In quick succession he became a member 
of the legislature, a State's attorney. Secretary of 
State, a judge on the supreme bench of Illinois, three 
times a representative in Congress, and a senator of 
the United States when only thirty-nine years old. 
In the national Democratic convention of 1852, he 
appeared even as an aspirant to the nomination for 
the presidency, as the favorite of " young America," 
and received a respectable vote. He had far out- 
stripped Lincoln in what is commonly called political 
success and in reputation. But it had frequently 
happened that in political campaigns Lincoln felt him- 
self impelled, or was selected by his Whig friends, 
to answer Douglas's speeches ; and thus the two 
were looked upon, in a large part of the State at least, 
as the representative combatants of their respective 
parties in the debates before popular meetings. As 
soon, therefore, as, after the passage of his Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, Douglas returned to Illinois to defend 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

his cause before his constituents, Lincoln, obeying not 
'only his own impulse, but also general expectation, 
stepped forward as his principal opponent. Thus the 
struggle about the principles involved in the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, or, in a broader sense, the struggle be- 
tween freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois the 
outward form of a personal contest between Lincoln 
and Douglas ; and as it continued and became more 
animated, that personal contest in Illinois was watched 
with constantly increasing interest by the whole coun- 
try. When, in 1858, Douglas's senatorial term being 
about to expire, Lincoln was formally designated by 
the Republican convention of Illinois as their candi- 
date for the Senate, to take Douglas's place, and the 
two contestants agreed to debate the questions at issue 
face to face in a series of public meetings, the eyes of 
the whole American people were turned eagerly to that 
one point ; and the spectacle reminded one of those 
lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle 
array, standing still to see their two principal cham- 
pions fight out the contested cause between the lines 
in single combat. 

Lincoln had then reached the full maturity of his 
powers. His equipment as a statesman did not em- 
brace a comprehensive knowledge of public affairs. 
What he had studied he had indeed made his own, 
with the eager craving and that zealous tenacity char- 
acteristic of superior minds learning under difficulties. 
But his narrow opportunities and the unsteady life he 
had led during his younger years had not permitted 
the accumulation of large stores in his mind. It is 
true, in political campaigns he had occasionally spoken 
on the ostensible issues between the Whigs and the 
Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. ^ 27 

and so on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had 
he ever given much serious thought and study to these 
subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so prolific 
of original conceits as his would certainly have pro- 
duced some utterance upon them worth remembering. 
His soul had evidently never been deeply stirred by 
such topics. But when his moral nature was aroused, 
his brain developed an untiring activity until it had 
mastered all the knowledge within reach. As soon 
as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had thrust 
the slavery question into politics as the paramount 
issue, Lincoln plunged into an arduous study of all its 
legal, historical, and moral aspects, and then his mind 
became a complete arsenal of argument. His rich 
natural gifts, trained by long and varied practice, had 
made him an orator of rare persuasiveness. In his 
immature days, he had pleased himself for a short 
period with that inflated, high-flown style which, 
among the uncultivated, passes for " beautiful speak- 
inof." His inborn truthfulness and his artistic instinct 
soon overcame that aberration, and revealed to him 
the noble beauty and strength of simplicity. He 
possessed an uncommon power of clear and compact 
statement, which might have reminded those who knew 
the story of his early youth of the efforts of the poor 
boy, when he copied his compositions from the scraped 
wooden shovel, carefully to trim his expressions in 
order to save paper. His language had the energy of 
honest directness, and he was a master of logical lucid- 
ity. He loved to point and enliven his reasoning by 
humorous illustrations, usually anecdotes of Western 
life, of which he had an inexhaustible store at his 
command. These anecdotes had not seldom a flavor 
of rustic robustness about them, but he used them with 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

great effect, wliile amusing the audience, to give life 
to an abstraction, to explode an absurdity, to clinch an 
argument, to drive home an admonition. The natural 
kindliness of his tone, softening prejudice and dis- 
arming partisan rancor, would often open to his rea- 
soning a way into minds most unwilling to receive it. 
Yet his greatest power consisted in the charm of 
his individuality. That charm did not, in the ordi- 
nary way, appeal to the ear or to the eye. His voice 
was not melodious ; rather shrill and piercing, espe- 
cially when it rose to its high treble in moments of 
great animation. His figure was uiihandsome, and 
the action of his unwieldy limbs awkward. He com- 
manded none of the outward graces of oratory as they 
are commonly understood. His charm was of a dif- 
ferent kind. It flowed from the rare depth and gen- 
uineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feel- 
ings. Sympathy was the strongest element in his 
nature. One of his biographers, who knew him before 
he became President, says: *^ Lincoln's compassion 
might be stirred deeply by an object present, but 
never by an object absent and unseen. In the former 
case he would most likely extend relief, with little 
inquiry into the merits of the case, because, as he 
expressed it himself, it ' took a pain out of his own 
heart.' " Only half of this is correct. It is certainly 
true that he could not witness any individual distress 
or oppression, or any kind of suffering, without feel- 
ing a pang of pain himself, and that by relieving as 
much as he could the suffering of others he put an 
end to his own. This compassionate impulse to help 
he felt not only for human beings, but for every liv- 
ing creature. As in his boyhood he angrily reproved 
the boys who tormented a wood turtle by putting a 



V^.'' !l? 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 29 

burning coal on its back, so, we are told, he would, 
when a mature man, on a journey, dismount from his 
buggy and wade waist-deep in mire to rescue a pig 
struggling in a swamp. Indeed, appeals to his com- 
passion were so irresistible to him, and he felt it so 
difficult to refuse anything when his refusal could give 
pain, that he himself sometimes sj)oke of his inability 
to say " no " as a positive weakness. But that cer- 
tainly does not prove that his compassionate feeling 
was confined to individual cases of suffering witnessed 
with his own eyes. As the boy was moved by the as- 
pect of the tortured wood turtle to compose an essay 
against cruelty to animals in general, so the aspect of 
other cases of suffering and wrong wrought up his 
moral nature, and set his mind to work against cruelty, 
injustice, and oppression in general. 

As his sympathy went forth to others, it attracted 
others to him. Especially those whom he called the 
" plain people " felt themselves drawn to him by the 
instinctive feeling that he understood, esteemed, and 
appreciated them. He had grown up among the 
poor, the lowly, the ignorant. He never ceased to re- 
member the good souls he had met among them, and 
the many kindnesses they had done him. Although 
in his mental development he had risen far above 
them, he never looked down upon them. How they 
felt and how they reasoned he knew, for so he had 
once felt and reasoned himself. How they could be 
moved he knew, for so he had once been moved him- 
self, and he practised moving others. His mind was 
much larger than theirs, but it thoroughly compre- 
hended theirs ; and while he thought much farther 
than they, their thoughts were ever present to him. 
Nor had the visible distance between them grown as 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

wide as his rise in the world would seem to have 
warranted. Much of his backwoods speech and man- 
ners still clung to him. Although he had become 
" Mr. Lincoln " to his later acquaintances, he was 
still " Abe " to the " Nats " and " Billys " and 
" Daves " of his youth ; and their familiarity neither 
appeared unnatural to them, nor was it in the least 
awkward to him. He still told and enjoyed stories 
similar to those he had told and enjoyed in the In- 
diana settlement and at New Salem. His wants 
remained as modest as they had ever been ; his do- 
mestic habits had by no means completely accom- 
modated themselves to those of his more high-born 
wife ; and though the " Kentucky jeans " apparel had 
long been dropped, his clothes of better material and 
better make would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs. 
His cotton umbrella, without a handle, and tied to- 
gether with a coarse string to keep it from flapping, 
when he carried on his circuit rides, is said to be re- 
membered still by some of his surviving neighbors. 
This rusticity of habit was utterly free from that 
affected contempt of refinement and comfort which 
self-made men sometimes carry into their more afflu- 
ent circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln it was en- 
tirely natural, and all those who came into contact 
with him knew it to be so. In his ways of thinking 
and feeling he had become a gentleman in the highest 
sense, but the refining process had polished but little 
the outward form. The plain people, therefore, still 
considered " honest Abe Lincoln " one of themselves : 
and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently 
did, that his thoughts and aspirations moved in a 
sphere above their own, they were all the more proud 
of him, without any diminution of fellow feeling. It 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 31 

was this relation of mutual sympathy and understand- 
ing between Lincoln and the plain people that gave 
him his peculiar power as a public man, and singu- 
larly fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership 
which was preeminently required in the great crisis 
then coming on, — the leadership which indeed thinks 
and moves ahead of the masses, but always remains 
within sight and sympathetic touch of them. 

He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better 
equipped than he had ever been before. He not 
only instinctively felt, but he had convinced himself 
by arduous study, that in this struggle against the 
spread of slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, the 
enlightened opinion of mankind, history, the Constitu- 
tion, and good policy on his side. It was observed 
that after he began to discuss the slavery question his 
speeches were pitched in a much loftier key than his 
former oratorical efforts. While he remained fond of 
telling funny stories in private conversation, they dis- 
appeared more and more from his public discourse. 
He would still now and then point his argument with 
expressions of inimitable quaintness, and flash out 
rays of kindly humor and witty irony ; but his general 
tone was serious, and rose sometimes to genuine so- 
lemnity. His masterly skill in dialectical thrust and 
parry, his wealth of knowledge, his power of reason- 
ing, and elevation of sentiment, disclosed in language 
of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not seldom 
astonished his old friends. 

Neither of the two champions could have found a 
more formidable antagonist than each now met in the 
other. Douglas was by far the most conspicuous 
member of his party. His admirers had dubbed him 
"the little giant," contrasting in that nickname the 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

greatness of his mind with the smallness of his body. 
But though of low stature, his broad-shouldered figure 
appeared uncommonly sturdy, and there was some- 
thing lion-like in the squareness of his brow and jaw, 
and in the defiant shake of his long hair. His loud 
and persistent advocacy of territorial expansion, in 
the name of patriotism and " manifest destiny," had 
given him an enthusiastic following among th* young 
and ardent. Great natural parts, a highly combative 
temperament, and long training had made him a de- 
bater unsurpassed in a Senate filled with able men. 
He could be as forceful in his appeals to patriotic feel- 
ings as he was fierce in denunciation and thoroughly 
skilled in all the baser tricks of parliamentary pugil- 
ism. While genial and rollicking in his social inter- 
course, — the idol of the "boys," — he felt himself 
one of the most renowned statesmen of his time, and 
would frequently meet his opponents with an over- 
bearing haughtiness, as persons more to be pitied than 
to be feared. In his speech opening the campaign of 
1858, he spoke of Lincoln, whom the Kepublicans 
had dared to advance as their candidate for "his" 
place in the Senate, with an air of patronizing if not 
contemptuous condescension, as " a kind, amiable, and 
intelligent gentleman and a good citizen." The little 
giant would have been pleased to pass off his antago- 
nist as a tall dwarf. He knew Lincoln too well, how- 
ever, to indulge himself seriously in such a delusion. 
But the political situation was at that moment in a 
curious tangle, and Douglas could expect to derive 
from the confusion great advantage over his opponent. 
By the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening 
the Territories to the ingress of slavery, Douglas had 
pleased the South, but greatly alarmed the North. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 33 

He had sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by- 
appending to his Kansas-Nebraska bill the declaration 
that its intent was " not to legislate slavery into any 
State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to 
leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and 
regulate their institutions in their own way, subject 
only to the Constitution of the United States." This 
he called " the great principle of popular sovereignty." 
When asked whether, under this act, the people of a 
Territory, before its admission as a State, would have 
the right to exclude slavery, he answered, "That 
is a question for the courts to decide." Then came 
the famous " Dred Scott decision," in which the Su- 
preme Court held substantially that the right to hold 
slaves as property existed in the Territories by virtue 
of the Federal Constitution, and that this right could 
not be denied by any act of a territorial government. 
This, of course, denied the right of the people of any 
Territory to exclude slavery while they were in a terri- 
torial condition, and it alarmed the Northern people 
still more. Douglas recognized the binding force of 
the decision of the Supreme Court, at the same time 
maintaining, most illogically, that his great principle 
of popular sovereignty remained in force nevertheless. 
Meanwhile, the pro-slavery people of western Missouri, 
the so-called " border ruffians," had invaded Kansas, 
set up a constitutional convention, made a constitution 
of an extreme pro-slavery type, the " Lecompton Con- 
stitution," refused to submit it fairly to a vote of the 
people of Kansas, and then referred it to Congress for 
acceptance, — seeking thus to accomplish the admission 
of Kansas as a slave State. Had Douglas supported 
such a scheme, he would have lost all foothold in the 
North. In the name of popular sovereignty he loudly 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

declared his opposition to the acceptance of any consti- 
tution not sanctioned by a formal popular vote. He 
" did not care," he said, " whether slavery be voted up 
or down," but there must be a fair vote of the people. 
Thus he drew upon himself the hostility of the Buch- 
anan administration, which was controlled by the pro- 
slavery interest, but he saved his Northern follow- 
ing. More than this, not only did his Democratic 
admirers now call him " the true champion of free- 
dom," but even some Kepublicans of large influence, 
prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing 
with Douglas in his fight against the Lecompton Con- 
stitution, and hoping to detach him permanently from 
the pro-slavery interest and to force a lasting breach 
in the Democratic party, seriously advised the Republi- 
cans of Illinois to give up their opposition to Douglas, 
and to help reelect him to the Senate. Lincoln was 
not of that opinion. He believed that great popular 
movements can succeed only when guided by their 
faithful friends, and that the anti-slavery cause could 
not safely be intrusted to the keeping of one who 
" did not care whether slavery be voted up or down." 
This opinion prevailed in Illinois ; but the influences 
within the Republican party, over which it prevailed, 
yielded only a reluctant acquiescence, if they acqui- 
esced at all, after having materially strengthened 
Douglas's position. Such was the situation of things 
when the campaign of 1858 between Lincoln and 
Douglas began. 

Lincoln opened the campaign on his side, at the 
convention which nominated him as the Republican 
candidate for the senatorship, with a memorable say- 
ing which sounded like a shout from the watch-tower 
of history : " A house divided against itself cannot 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 35 

stand. I believe this government cannot endure per- 
manently half slave and half free. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house 
to fall, but I expect it will cease to be divided. It 
will become all one thing or all the other. Either the 
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of 
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; 
or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall 
become alike lawful in all the States, — old as well as 
new, North as well as South." Then he proceeded to 
point out that the Nebraska doctrine combined with 
the Dred Scott decision worked in the direction of 
making the nation " all slave." Here was the " irre- 
pressible conflict " spoken of by Seward a short time 
later, in a speech made famous mainly by that phrase. 
If there was any new discovery in it, the right of pri- 
ority was Lincoln's. This utterance proved not only 
his statesmanlike conception of the issue, but also, in 
his situation as a candidate, the firmness of his moral 
courage. The friends to whom he had read the 
draught of this speech before he delivered it warned 
him anxiously that its delivery might be fatal to his 
success in the election. This was shrewd advice, 
in the ordinary sense. While a slaveholder could 
threaten disunion with impunity, the mere suggestion 
that the existence of slavery was incompatible with 
freedom in the Union would hazard the political 
chances of any public man in the North. But Lin- 
coln was inflexible. " It is true," said he, " and I 
will^deliwer it as written. ... I would rather be de- 
feated with these expressions in my speech held up 
and discussed before the people than be victorious 
without them." The statesman was right in his far- 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

seeing judgment and his conscientious statement of 
the truth, but the practical politicians were also right 
in their prediction of the immediate effect. Douglas 
instantly seized upon the declaration that a house 
divided against itself cannot stand as the main objec- 
tive point of his attack, interpreting it as an incite- 
ment to a " relentless sectional war," and there is no 
doubt that the persistent reiteration of this charge 
served to frighten not a few timid souls. 

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring the moral 
and philosophical side of the subject to the fore- 
ground. " Slavery is wrong " was the keynote of all 
his speeches. To Douglas's glittering sophism that 
the right of the people of a Territory to have slavery 
or not, as they might desire, was in accordance with 
the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made the 
pointed answer : " Then true popular sovereignty, 
according to Senator Douglas, means that, when one 
man makes another man his slave, no third man shall 
be allowed to object." To Douglas's argument that 
the principle which demanded that the people of a 
Territory should be permitted to choose whether they 
would have slavery or not " originated when God made 
man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing 
him to choose upon his own responsibility," Lincoln 
solemnly replied : " No ; God did not place good and 
evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On 
the contrary, God did tell him there was one tree of 
the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of 
death." He did not, however, place himself on the 
most advanced ground taken by the radical anti-sla- 
very men. He admitted that, under the Constitution, 
" the Southern people were entitled to a congressional 
fugitive slave law," although he did not approve the 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 37 

fugitive slave law then existing. He declared also 
that, if slavery were kept out of the Territories dur- 
ing their territorial existence, as it should be, and if 
then the people of any Territory, having a fair chance 
and a clear field, should do such an extraordinary 
thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced 
by the actual presence of the institution among them, 
he saw no alternative but to admit such a Territory 
into the Union. He declared further that, while he 
should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished 
in the District of Columbia, he would, as a member 
of Congress, with his present views, not endeavor 
to bring on that abolition except on condition that 
emancipation be gradual, that it be approved by the 
decision of a majority of voters in the District, and 
that compensation be made to unwilling owners. On 
every available occasion, he pronounced himself in 
favor of the deportation and colonization of the 
blacks, of course with their consent. He repeatedly 
disavowed any wish on his part to have social and po- 
litical equality established between whites and blacks. 
On this point he summed up his views in a reply to 
Douglas's assertion that the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, in speaking of all men as being created equal, 
did not include the negroes, saying : " I do not under- 
stand the Declaration of Independence to mean that 
all men were created equal in all respects. They are 
not equal in color. But I believe that it does mean 
to declare that all men are equal in some respects ; 
they are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." 

With regard to some of these subjects Lincoln 
modified his position at a later period, and it has been 
suggested that he would have professed more advanced 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

principles in his debates with Douglas, had he not 
feared thereby to lose votes. This view can hardly 
be sustained. Lincoln had the courage of his opin- 
ions, but he was not a radical. The man who risked 
his election by delivering, against the urgent protest 
of his friends, the speech about " the house divided 
a2:ainst itself " would not have shrunk from the ex- 
pression of more extreme views, had he really enter- 
tained them. It is only fair to assume that he said 
what at the time he really thought, and that if, subse- 
quently, his opinions changed, it was owing to new 
conceptions of good policy and of duty brought forth 
by an entirely new set of circumstances and exigen- 
cies. It is characteristic that he continued to adhere 
to the impracticable colonization plan even after the 
Emancipation Proclamation had already been issued. 
But in this contest Lincoln proved himself not 
only a debater, but also a political strategist of the 
first order. The " kind, amiable, and intelligent 
gentleman," as Douglas had been pleased to call 
him, was by no means as harmless as a dove. He pos- 
sessed an uncommon share of that worldly shrewdness 
which not seldom goes with genuine simplicity of 
character ; and the political experience gathered in 
the legislature and in Congress and in many election 
campaigns, added to his keen intuitions, had made 
him as far-sighted a judge of the probable effects of 
a public man's sayings or doings upon the popular 
mind, and as accurate a calculator in estimating polit- 
ical chances and forecasting results, as could be found 
among the party managers in Illinois. And now he 
perceived keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas 
found himself, between the Dred Scott decision, which 
declared the ri»ht to hold slaves to exist in the Terri- 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 39 

tories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and his 
" great principle of popular sovereignty," according 
to which the people of a Territory, if they saw fit, 
were to have the right to exclude slavery therefrom. 
Douglas was twisting and squirming to the best of 
his ability to avoid the admission that the two were 
incompatible. The question then presented itself if 
it would be good policy for Lincoln to force Douglas 
to a clear expression of his opinion as to whether, the 
Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, " the people of 
a Territory could in any lawful way exclude slavery 
from its limits prior to the formation of a state con- 
stitution." Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Doug- 
las would answer : that slavery could not exist in 
a Territory unless the people desired it and gave it 
protection by territorial legislation. In an impro- 
vised caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory 
on Douglas was discussed. Lincoln's friends unani- 
mously advised against it, because the answer fore- 
seen would sufficiently commend Douglas to the peo- 
ple of Illinois to insure his reelection to the Senate. 
But Lincoln persisted. "I am after larger game," 
said he. " If Douglas so answers, he can never be 
President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred 
of this." The interrogatory was pressed upon Doug- 
las, and Douglas did answer that, no matter what 
the decision of the Supreme Court might be on the 
abstract question, the people of a Territory had the 
lawful means to introduce or exclude slavery by terri- 
torial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the institu- 
tion. Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of 
the proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist 
of right in the Territories by virtue of the supreme 
law, the Federal Constitution, it could be kept out 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a terri- 
torial legislature. Again the judgment of the poli- 
ticians, having only the nearest object in view, proved 
correct: Douglas was reelected to the Senate. But 
Lincoln's judgment proved correct also : Douglas, by 
resorting to the expedient of his " unfriendly legisla- 
tion doctrine," forfeited his last chance of becoming 
President of the United States. He might have 
hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon 
from the South for his opposition to the Lecompton 
Constitution ; but that he taught the people of the 
Territories a trick by which they could defeat what 
the pro-slavery men considered a constitutional right, 
and that he called that trick lawful, — this the slave 
power would never forgive. The breach between the 
Southern and the Northern democracy was thence- 
forth irremediable and fatal. 

The presidential election of 1860 approached. The 
struggle in Kansas, and the debates in Congress 
which accompanied it, and which not unfrequently 
provoked violent outbursts, continually stirred the 
popular excitement. Within the Democratic party 
raged the war of factions. The national Democratic 
convention met at Charleston on the 23d of April, 
1860. After a struggle of ten days between the ad- 
herents and the opponents of Douglas, during which 
the delegates from the cotton States had withdrawn, 
the convention adjourned without having nominated 
any candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on the 
18th of June. There was no prospect, however, of 
reconciling the hostile elements. It appeared very 
probable that the Baltimore convention would nomi- 
nate Douglas, while the seceding Southern Democrats 
would set up a candidate of their own, representing 
extreme pro-slavery principles. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 41 

Meanwhile, the national Eepublican convention as- 
sembled at Chicago on the 16th of May, full of enthu- 
siasm and hope. The situation was easily understood. 
The Democrats would have the South. In order to 
succeed in the election, the Republicans had to win, 
in addition to the States carried by Fremont in 1856, 
those that were classed as " doubtful," — New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and Indiana, or Illinois in the place 
of either New Jersey or Indiana. The most eminent 
Republican statesmen and leaders of the time thought 
of for the presidency were Seward and Chase, both 
regarded as belonging to the more advanced order of 
anti-slavery men. Of the two, Seward had the largest 
following, mainly from New York, New England, and 
the Northwest. Cautious politicians doubted seri- 
ously whether Seward, to whom some phrases in his 
speeches had undeservedly given the reputation of a 
reckless radical, would be able to command the whole 
Republican vote in the doubtful States. Besides, 
during his long public career he had made enemies. 
It was evident that those who thought Seward's nomi- 
nation too hazardous an experiment would consider 
Chase unavailable for the same reason. They would 
then look round for an " available " man ; and 
among the " available " men Abraham Lincoln was 
easily discovered to stand foremost. His great debate 
with Douglas had given him a national reputation. 
The people of the East being eager to see the hero of 
so dramatic a contest, he had been induced to visit 
several Eastern cities, and had astonished and de- 
lighted large and distinguished audiences with speeches 
of singular power and originality. An address deliv- 
ered by him in the Cooper Institute in New York, 
before an audience containing a large number of im- 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

portant persons, was then, and has ever since been, 
especially praised as one of the most logical and con- 
vincing political speeches ever made in this country. 
The people of the West had grown proud of him as 
a distinctively Western great man, and his popularity 
at home had some peculiar features which could be 
expected to exercise a j^otent charm. Nor was Lin- 
coln's name as that of an available candidate left to 
the chance of accidental discovery. It is indeed not 
probable that he thought of himself as a presidential 
possibility, during his contest with Douglas for the 
senatorship. As late as April, 1859, he had written 
to a friend who had approached him on the subject 
that he did not think himself fit for the presidency. 
The vice-presidency was then the limit of his ambi- 
tion. But some of his friends in Illinois took the 
matter seriously in hand, and Lincoln, after some 
hesitation, then formally authorized " the use of his 
name." The matter was managed with such energy 
and excellent judgment that in the convention he 
had not only the whole vote of Illinois to start with, 
but won votes on all sides without offending any 
rival. A large majority of the opponents of Seward 
went over to Abraham Lincoln, and gave him the 
nomination on the third ballot. As had been fore- 
seen, Douglas was nominated by one wing of the 
Democratic party at Baltimore, while the extreme 
pro-slavery wing put Breckinridge into the field as 
its candidate. After a campaign conducted with the 
energy of genuine enthusiasm on the anti-slavery 
side, the united Republicans defeated the divided 
Democrats, and Lincoln was elected President by a 
majority of fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges. 
The result of the election had hardly been declared 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 43 

when the disunion movement in the South, long 
threatened and carefully planned and prepared, broke 
out in the shape of open revolt, and nearly a month 
before Lincoln could be inaugurated as President of 
the United States, seven Southern States had adojited 
ordinances of secession, formed an independent con- 
federacy, framed a constitution for it, and elected 
Jefferson Davis its president, expecting the other 
slaveholding States soon to join them. On the 11th 
of February, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield for Wash- 
ington ; having, with characteristic simplicity, asked 
his law partner not to change the sign of the firm 
" Lincoln and Herndon " during the four years' una- 
voidable absence of the senior partner, and having 
taken an affectionate and touching leave of his neigh- 
bors. 

The situation which confronted the new President 
was appalling : the larger part of the South in open 
rebellion, the rest of the slaveholding States wavering, 
preparing to follow ; the revolt guided by determined, 
daring, and skilful leaders; the Southern people, 
apparently full of enthusiasm and military spirit, 
rushing to arms, some of the forts and arsenals already 
in their possession ; the government of the Union, 
before the accession of the new President, in the 
hands of men some of whom actively sympathized 
with the revolt, while others were hampered by their 
traditional doctrines in dealing with it, and really 
gave it aid and comfort by their irresolute attitude ; 
all the departments full of " Southern sympathizers " 
and honeycombed with disloyalty ; the treasury empty, 
and the public credit at the lowest ebb ; the arsenals 
ill supplied with arms, if not emptied by treacherous 
practices ; the regular army of insignificant strength, 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

dispersed over an immense surface, and deprived by 
defection of some of its best officers ; the navy small 
and antiquated. But that was not all. The threat of 
disunion had so often been resorted to by the slave 
power in years gone by that most Northern people 
had ceased to believe in its seriousness. But when 
disunion actually appeared as a stern reality, some- 
thing like a chill swept through the whole Northern 
country. A cry for union and peace at any price 
rose on all sides. Democratic partisanship reiterated 
this cry with vociferous vehemence, and even many 
Kepublicans grew afraid of the victory they had just 
achieved at the ballot-box, and spoke of compromise. 
The country fairly resounded with the noise of " anti- 
coercion meetings." Expressions of firm resolution 
from determined anti-slavery men were indeed not 
wanting, but they were for a while almost drowned by 
a bewildering confusion of discordant voices. Even 
this was not all. Potent influences in Europe, with 
an ill-concealed desire for the permanent disruption of 
the American Union, eagerly espoused the cause of 
the Southern seceders, and the two principal maritime 
powers of the Old World seemed only to be waiting 
for a favorable opportunity to lend them a helping 
hand. 

This was the state of things to be mastered by 
"honest Abe Lincoln " when he took his seat in the 
presidential chair, — " honest Abe Lincoln," who was 
so good natured that he could not say " no ; " the 
greatest achievement in whose life had been a debate 
on the slavery question ; who had never been in any 
position of power ; who was without the slightest ex- 
perience of high executive duties, and who had only 
a speaking acquaintance with the men upon whose 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 45 

counsel and cooperation he was to depend. Nor was 
his accession to power under such circumstances 
greeted with general confidence even by the members 
of his party. While he had indeed won much popu- 
larity, many Republicans, especially among those who 
had advocated Seward's nomination for the presi- 
dency, with a feeling little short of dismay, saw the 
simple "Illinois lawyer" take the reins of govern- 
ment. The orators and journals of the opposition 
were ridiculing and lampooning him without measure. 
Many people actually wondered how such a man could 
dare to undertake a task which, as he himself had 
said to his neighbors in his parting speech, was " more 
difficult than that of Washington himself had been." 
But Lincoln brought to that task, aside from other 
uncommon qualities, the first requisite, — an intuitive 
comprehension of its nature. While he did not in- 
dulge in the delusion that the Union could be main- 
tained or restored without a conflict of arms, he could 
indeed not foresee all the problems he would have to 
solve. He instinctively understood, however, by what 
means that conflict would have to be conducted by 
the government of a democracy. He knew that the 
impending war, whether great or small, would not be 
like a foreign war, exciting a united national enthu- 
siasm, but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon 
heat the animosities of party even in the localities 
controlled by the government; that this war would 
have to be carried on, not by means of a ready-made 
machinery, ruled by an undisputed, absolute will, but 
by means to be furnished by the voluntary action 
of the people : — armies to be formed by voluntary 
enlistment ; large sums of money to be raised by the 
people, through their representatives, voluntarily tax- 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ing themselves ; trusts of extraordinary power to be 
voluntarily granted ; and war measures, not seldom 
restricting the rights and liberties to which the citizen 
was accustomed, to be voluntarily accepted and sub- 
mitted to by the people, or at least a large majority of 
them ; — and that this would have to be kept up, not 
merely during a short period of enthusiastic excite- 
ment, but possibly through weary years of alternating 
success and disaster, hope and despondency. He 
knew that in order to steer this government by public 
opinion successfully through all the confusion created 
by the prejudices and doubts and differences of sen- 
timent distracting the popular mind, and so to propi- 
tiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and guide the 
popular will that it might give forth all the means re- 
quired for the performance of his great task, he would 
have to take into account all the influences strongly 
affecting the current of popular thought and feeling, 
and to direct while appearing to obey. 

This was the kind of leadership he intuitively 
conceived to be needed when a free people were to be 
led forward en masse to overcome a great common dan- 
ger under circumstances of appalling difficulty, — the 
leadership which does not dash ahead with brilliant 
daring, no matter who follows, but which is intent 
upon rallying all the available forces, gathering in 
the stragglers, closing up the column, so that the front 
may advance well supported. For this leadership 
Abraham Lincoln was admirably fitted, — better than 
any other American statesman of his day ; for he 
understood the plain people, with all their loves and 
hates, their prejudices and their noble impulses, their 
weaknesses and their strength, as he understood him- 
self, and his sympathetic nature was apt to draw their 
sympathy to him. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 47 

His inaugural address ^ foreshadowed his official 
course in characteristic manner. Although yielding 
nothing in point of principle, it was by no means a 
flaming anti-slavery manifesto, such as would have 
pleased the more ardent Republicans. It was rather 
the entreaty of a sorrowing father speaking to his 
wayward children. In the kindliest language he 
pointed out to the secessionists how ill-advised their 
attempt at disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, 
they should desist. Almost plaintively he told them 
that, while it was not their duty to destroy the Union, 
it was his sworn duty to preserve it ; that the least he 
could do, under the obligations of his oath, was to 
possess and hold the property of the United States ; 
that he hoped to do this peaceably ; that he abhorred 
war for any purpose, and that they would have none 
unless they themselves were the aggressors. It was a 
masterpiece of persuasiveness ; and while Lincoln had 
accepted many valuable amendments suggested by 
Seward, it was essentially his own. Probably Lincoln 
himself did not expect his inaugural address to have 
any effect upon the secessionists, for he must have 
known them to be resolved upon disunion at any cost. 
But it was an appeal to the wavering minds in the 
North, and upon them it made a profound impression. 
Every candid man, however timid and halting, had to 
admit that the President was bound by his oath to do 
his duty ; that under that oath he could do no less 
than he said he would do; that if the secessionists 
resisted such an appeal as the President had made, 
they were bent upon mischief, and that the govern- 
ment must be supported against them. The partisan 
sympathy with the Southern insurrection which still 
1 Printed in Number 32, Riverside Literature series. 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

existed in the North did indeed not disappear, but it 
diminished perceptibly under the influence of such 
reasoning. Those who still resisted it did so at the 
risk of appearing unpatriotic. 

It must not be supposed, however, that Lincoln at 
once succeeded in pleasing everybody, even among his 
friends, — even among those nearest to him. In select- 
ing his cabinet, which he did substantially before he 
left Springfield for Washington, he thought it wise to 
call to his assistance the strong men of his party, espe- 
cially those who had given evidence of the support 
they commanded as his competitors in the Chicago 
convention. In them he found at the same time repre- 
sentatives of the different shades of opinion within 
the party, and of the different elements — former 
Whigs and former Democrats — from which the party 
had recruited itself. This was sound policy under the 
circumstances. It might indeed have been foreseen 
that among the members of a cabinet so composed, 
troublesome disagreements and rivalries would break 
out. But it was better for the President to have these 
strong and ambitious men near him as his cobpera- 
tors than to have them as his critics in Congress, 
where their differences might have been composed in 
a common opposition to him. As members of his 
cabinet he could hope to control them, and to keep 
them busily employed in the service of a common pur- 
pose, if he had the strength to do so. Whether he 
did possess this strength was soon tested by a singu- 
larly rude trial. 

There can be no doubt that the foremost members 
of his cabinet, Seward and Chase, the most eminent 
Kepublican statesmen, had felt themselves wronged 
by their party when in its national convention it 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 49 

preferred to them for the presidency a man whom, 
not unnaturally, they thought greatly their inferior in 
ability and experience as well as in service. The sore- 
ness of that disappointment was intensified when they 
saw this Western man in the White House, with so 
much of rustic manner and speech as still clung to 
him, meeting his fellow citizens, high and low, on a 
footing of equality, with the simplicity of his good 
nature unburdened by any conventional dignity of 
deportment, and dealing with the great business of 
state in an easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently 
somewhat irreverent way. They did not understand 
such a man. Especially Seward, who, as Secretary of 
State, considered himself next to the Chief Executive, 
and who quickly accustomed himself to giving or- 
ders and making arrangements upon his own motion, 
thought it necessary that he should rescue the direc- 
tion of public affairs from hands so unskilled, and 
take full charge of them himself. At the end of the 
first month of the administration he submitted a 
" memorandum " to President Lincoln, which has been 
first brought to light by Nicolay and Hay,^ and is one 
of their most valuable contributions to the history of 
those days. In that paper Seward actually told the 
President that, at the end of a month's administration, 
the government was still without a policy, either do- 
mestic or foreign ; that the slavery question should be 
eliminated from the struggle about the Union ; that 
the matter of the maintenance of the forts and other 
possessions in the South should be decided with that 
view ; that explanations should be demanded categor- 
ically from the governments of Spain and France, 

1 In tlieir Life of Lincoln, in ten volumes, published by The 
Century Company, New York. 



60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

which were then preparing, one for the annexation of 
San Domingo, and both for the invasion of Mexico ; 
that if no satisfactory explanations were received war 
should be declared against Spain and France by the 
United States ; that explanations should also be sought 
from Kussia and Great Britain, and a vigorous conti- 
nental spirit of independence against European inter- 
vention be aroused all over the American continent ; 
that this policy should be incessantly pursued and di- 
rected by somebody ; that either the President should 
devote himself entirely to it, or devolve the direction 
on some member of his cabinet, whereupon all debate 
on this policy must end. 

This could be understood only as a formal demand 
that the President should acknowledge his own incom- 
petency to perform his duties, content himself with 
the amusement of distributing post offices, and resign 
his power as to all important affairs into the hands of 
his Secretary of State. It seems to-day incomprehen- 
sible how a statesman of Seward's calibre could at 
that period conceive a plan of policy in which the 
slavery question had no place ; a policy which rested 
upon the utterly delusive assumption that the seces- 
sionists, who had already formed their Southern Con- 
federacy, and were with stern resolution preparing to 
fight for its independence, could be hoodwinked back 
into the Union by some sentimental demonstration 
against European interference ; a policy which, at 
that critical moment, would have involved the Union 
in a foreign war, thus inviting foreign intervention 
in favor of the Southern Confederacy, and increasing 
tenfold its chances in the struggle for independence. 
But it is equally incomprehensible how Seward could 
fail to see that this demand of an unconditional 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 51 

surrender was a mortal insult to the head of the gov- 
ernment, and that by putting his proposition on paper 
he delivered himself into the hands of the very man 
he had insulted ; for had Lincoln, as most Presidents 
would have done, instantly dismissed Seward, and 
published the true reason for that dismissal, it would 
inevitably have been the end of Seward's career. But 
Lincoln did what not many of the noblest and great- 
est men in history would have been noble and great 
enough to do. He considered that Seward, if rightly 
controlled, was still capable of rendering great service 
to his country in the place in which he was. He 
ignored the insult, but firmly established his superior- 
ity. In his reply, which he forthwith dispatched, he 
told Seward that the administration had a domestic 
policy as laid down in the inaugural address with 
Seward's approval ; that it had a foreign policy as 
traced in Seward's dispatches with the President's 
approval ; that if any policy was to be maintained or 
changed, he, the President, was to direct that on his 
responsibility ; and that in performing that duty the 
President had a right to the advice of his secretaries. 
Seward's fantastic schemes of foreign war and conti- 
nental policies Lincoln brushed aside by passing them 
over in silence. Nothing more was said. Seward 
must have felt that he was at the mercy of a superior 
man ; that his offensive proposition had been gener- 
ously pardoned as a temporary aberration of a great 
mind, and that he could atone for it only by devoted 
personal loyalty. This he did. He was thoroughly 
subdued, and thenceforth submitted to Lincoln his 
dispatches for revision and amendment without a 
murmur. The war with European nations was no 
longer thought of ; the slavery question found in due 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

time its proper place in the struggle for the Union ; 
and when, at a later period, the dismissal of Seward 
was demanded by dissatisfied senators who attributed 
to him the shortcomings of the administration, Lin- 
coln stood stoutly by his faithful Secretary of State. 

Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of 
superb presence, of eminent ability and ardent pa- 
triotism, of great natural dignity and a certain out- 
ward coldness of manner, which made him appear 
more difficult of approach than he really was, did not 
permit his disappointment to burst out in such ex- 
travagant demonstrations. But Lincoln's ways were 
so essentially different from his that they never be- 
came quite intelligible, and certainly not congenial to 
him. It might, perhaps, have been better had there 
been, at the beginning of the administration, some 
decided clash between Lincoln and Chase, as there 
was between Lincoln and Seward, to bring on a full 
mutual explanation, and to make Chase appreciate 
the real seriousness of Lincoln's nature. But as it 
was, their relations always remained somewhat formal, 
and Chase never felt quite at ease under a chief 
whom he could not understand, and whose character 
and powers he never learned to esteem at their true 
value. At the same time, he devoted himself zealously 
to the duties of his department, and did the country 
arduous service under circumstances of extreme diffi- 
culty. Nobody recognized this more heartily than 
Lincoln himself, and they managed to work together 
until near the end of Lincoln's first presidential term, 
when Chase, after some disagreements concerning ap- 
pointments to office, resigned from the treasury ; and 
after Taney's death, the President made him Chief 
Justice. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 53 

The rest of the cabinet consisted of men of less 
eminence, who subordinated themselves more easily. 
In January, 1862, Lincoln found it necessary to bow- 
Cameron out of the war office, and to put in his place 
Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely practical mind, 
vehement impulses, fierce positiveness, ruthless energy, 
immense working power, lofty patriotism, and severest 
devotion to duty. He accepted the war office, not as 
a partisan, for he had never been a Kepublican, but 
only to do all he could in " helping to save the coun- 
try." The manner in which Lincoln succeeded in 
taming this lion to his will, by frankly recognizing 
his great qualities, by giving him the most generous 
confidence, by aiding him in his work to the full of 
his power, by kindly concession or affectionate per- 
suasiveness in cases of differing opinions, or, when it 
was necessary, by firm assertions of superior authority, 
bears the highest testimony to his skill in the manage- 
ment of men. Stanton, who had entered the service 
with rather a mean opinion of Lincoln's character 
and capacity, became one of his warmest, most de- 
voted, and most admiring friends, and with none of 
his secretaries was Lincoln's intercourse more intimate. 
To take advice with candid readiness, and to weigh it 
without any pride of his own opinion, was one of Lin- 
coln's preeminent virtues ; but he had not long pre- 
sided over his cabinet council when his was felt by 
all its members to be the rulino^ mind. 

The cautious policy foreshadowed in his inaugural 
address, and pursued during the first period of the 
civil war, was far from satisfying all his party friends. 
The ardent spirits among the Union men thought 
that the whole North should at once be called to arms, 
to crush the rebellion by one powerful blow. The 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ardent spirits among the anti-slavery men insisted 
that, slavery having brought forth the rebellion, this 
powerful blow should at once be aimed at slavery. 
Both complained that the administration was spiritless, 
undecided, and lamentably slow in its proceedings. 
Lincoln reasoned otherwise. The ways of thinking 
and feeling of the masses, of the plain people, were 
constantly present to his mind. The masses, the plain 
people, had to furnish the men for the fighting, if 
fighting was to be done. He believed that the plain 
people would be ready to fight when it clearly ap- 
peared necessary, and that they would feel that neces- 
sity when they felt themselves attacked. He there- 
fore waited until the enemies of the Union struck the 
first blow. As soon as, on the 12th of April, 1861, 
the first gun was fired in Charleston harbor on the 
Union flag upon Fort Sumter, the call was sounded, 
and the Northern people rushed to arms. 

Lincoln knew that the plain people were now in- 
deed ready to fight in defence of the Union, but not 
yet ready to fight for the destruction of slavery. He 
declared openly that he had a right to summon the 
people to fight for the Union, but not to summon 
them to fight for the abolition of slavery as a primary 
object ; and this declaration gave him numberless sol- 
diers for the Union who at that period would have 
hesitated to do battle against the institution of slavery. 
For a time he succeeded in rendering harmless the 
cry of the partisan opposition that the Republican 
administration was perverting the war for the Union 
into an "abolition war." But when he went so far 
as to countermand the acts of some generals in the 
field, looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the 
districts covered by their commands, loud complaints 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 65 

arose from earnest anti-slavery men, who accused the 
President of turning his back upon the anti-slavery 
cause. Many of these anti-slavery men will now, 
after a calm retrospect, be willing to admit that it 
would have been a hazardous policy to endanger, by 
precipitating a demonstrative fight against slavery, 
the success of the struggle for the Union. 

Lincoln's views and feelings concerning slavery 
had not changed. Those who conversed with him in- 
timately upon the subject at that period know that he 
did not expect slavery long to survive the triumph of 
the Union, even if it were not immediately destroyed 
by the war. In this he was right. Had the Union 
armies achieved a decisive victory in an early period 
of the conflict, and had the seceded States been re- 
ceived back with slavery, the " slave power " would 
then have been a defeated power, — defeated in an 
attempt to carry out its most effective threat. It 
would have lost its prestige. Its menaces would have 
been hollow sound, and ceased to make any one afraid. 
It could no longer have hoped to expand, to maintain 
an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and to con- 
trol the government. The victorious free States would 
have largely overbalanced it. It would no longer 
have been able to withstand the onset of a hostile age. 
It could no longer have ruled, — and slavery had to 
rule in order to live. It would have lingered for a 
while, but it would surely have been " in the course 
of ultimate extinction." A prolonged war precipi- 
tated the destruction of slavery; a short war might 
only have prolonged its death struggle. Lincoln saw 
this clearly; but he saw also that, in a protracted 
death struggle, it might still have kept disloyal senti- 
ments alive, bred distracting commotions, and caused 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

great mischief to the country. He therefore hoped 
that slavery would not survive the war. 

But the question how he could rightfully employ 
his power to bring on its speedy destruction was to 
him not a question of mere sentiment. He himself 
set forth his reasoning upon it, at a later period, in 
one of his inimitable letters. " I am naturally anti- 
slavery," said he. " If slavery is not wrong, nothing 
is wrong. I cannot remember the time when I did 
not so think and feel. And yet I have never under- 
stood that the presidency conferred upon me an unre- 
stricted right to act upon that judgment and feeling. 
It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of 
my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. I could not take the office 
without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I 
might take an oath to get power, and break the oath 
in using that power. I understood, too, that, in ordi- 
nary civil administration, this oath even forbade me 
practically to indulge my private abstract judgment 
on the moral question of slavery. I did understand, 
however, also, that my oath imposed upon me the 
duty of preserving, to the best of my ability, by every 
indispensable means, that government, that nation, of 
which the Constitution was the organic law. I could 
not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even 
tried to preserve the Constitution if, to save slavery, 
or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of 
government, country, and Constitution all together." 
In other words, if the salvation of the government, the 
Constitution, and the Union demanded tlie destruction 
of slavery, he felt it to be not only his right, but his 
sworn duty to destroy it. Its destruction became a 
necessity of the war for the Union. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 57 

As the war dragged on and disaster followed dis- 
aster, the sense of that necessity steadily grew upon 
him. Early in 1862, as some of his friends well re- 
member, he saw, what Seward seemed not to see, that 
to give the war for the Union an anti-slavery charac- 
ter was the surest means to prevent the recognition of 
the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation 
by European powers ; that, slavery being abhorred 
by the moral sense of civilized mankind, no Euro- 
pean government would dare to offer so gross an 
insult to the public opinion of its people as openly to 
favor the creation of a state founded upon slavery to 
the prejudice of an existing nation fighting against 
slavery. He saw also that slavery untouched was to 
the rebellion an element of power, and that in order 
to overcome that power it was necessary to turn it 
into an element of weakness. Still, he felt no assur- 
ance that the plain people were prepared for so radical 
a measure as the emancipation of the slaves by act 
of the government, and he anxiously considered that, 
if they were not, this great step might, by exciting dis- 
sension at the North, injure the cause of the Union in 
one quarter more than it would help it in another. 
He heartily welcomed an effort made in New York to 
mould and stimulate public sentiment on the slavery 
question by public meetings boldly pronouncing for 
emancipation. At the same time he himself cau- 
tiously advanced with a recommendation, expressed in 
a special message to Congress, that the United States 
should cooperate with any State which might adopt 
the gradual abolishment of slavery, giving such State 
pecuniary aid to compensate the former owners of 
emancipated slaves. The discussion was started, and 
spread rapidly. Congress adopted the resolution re- 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

commended, and soon went a step farther in passing 
a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. 
The plain people began to look at emancipation on a 
larger scale, as a thing to be considered seriously by 
patriotic citizens ; and soon Lincoln thought that the 
time was ripe, and that the edict of freedom could be 
ventured upon without danger of serious confusion in 
the Union ranks. 

The failure of McClellan's movement upon Rich- 
mond increased immensely the prestige of the enemy. 
The need of some great act to stimulate the vitality 
of the Union cause seemed to grow daily more press- 
ing. On July 21, 1862, Lincoln surprised his cabinet 
with the draught of a proclamation declaring free the 
slaves in all the States that should be still in rebel- 
lion against the United States on the 1st of January, 
1863. As to the matter itself he announced that he 
had fully made up his mind ; he invited advice only 
concerning the form and the time of publication. 
Seward suggested that the proclamation, if then 
brought out, amidst disaster and distress, would sound 
like the last shriek of a perishing cause. Lincoln 
accepted the suggestion, and the proclamation was 
postponed. Another defeat followed, the second at 
Bull Run. But when, after that battle, the Confed- 
erate army, under Lee, crossed the Potomac and in- 
vaded Maryland, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if 
the Union army were now blessed with success, the 
decree of freedom should surely be issued. The vic- 
tory of Antietam was won on September 17, and the 
preliminary Emancipation Proclamation came forth 
on the 22d. It was Lincoln's own resolution and act ; 
but practically it bound the nation, and permitted no 
step backward. In spite of its limitations, it was the 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 59 

actual abolition of slavery. Thus he wrote his name 
upon the books of history with the title dearest to his 
heart, — the liberator of the slave. 

It is true, the great proclamation, which stamped 
the war as one for " union and freedom," did not at 
once mark the turning of the tide on the field of mili- 
tary operations. There were more disasters, — Fred- 
ericksburg and Chancellorsville. But with Gettys- 
burg and Yicksburg the whole aspect of the war 
changed. Step by step, now more slowly, then more 
rapidly, but with increasing steadiness, the flag of 
the Union advanced from field to field toward the 
final consummation. The decree of emancipation was 
naturally followed by the enlistment of emancipated 
negroes in the Union armies. This measure had a 
farther reaching effect than merely giving the Union 
armies an increased supply of men. The laboring 
force of the rebellion was hopelessly disorganized. 
The war became like a problem of arithmetic. As 
the Union armies pushed forward, the area from 
which the Southern Confederacy could draw recruits 
and sui^plies constantly grew smaller, while the area 
from which the Union recruited its strength con- 
stantly grew larger : and everywhere, even within the 
Southern lines, the Union had its allies. The fate of 
the rebellion was then virtually decided ; but it still 
required much bloody work to convince the brave 
warriors who fought for it that they were really 
beaten. 

Neither did the Emancipation Proclamation ^ forth- 
with command universal assent among the people who 
were loyal to the Union. There were even signs of a 

^ The text of the Emancipation Proclamation will be found 
in Number 32, Riverside Literature series. 



60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

reaction against the administration in the fall elec- 
tions of 1862, seemingly justifying the opinion, enter- 
tained by many, that the President had really antici- 
pated the development of popular feeling. The cry 
that the war for the Union had been turned into an 
" abolition war " was raised again by the opposition, 
and more loudly than ever. But the good sense and 
patriotic instincts of the plain people gradually mar- 
shalled themselves on Lincoln's side, and he lost no 
opportunity to help on this process by personal argu- 
ment and admonition. There never has been a Presi- 
dent in such constant and active contact with the 
public opinion of the country, as there never has been 
a President who, while at the head of the government, 
remained so near to the people. Beyond the circle of 
those who had long known him, the feeling steadily 
grew that the man in the White House was " honest 
Abe Lincoln " still, and that every citizen might ap- 
proach him with complaint, expostulation, or advice, 
without danger of meeting a rebuff from power-proud 
authority or humiliating condescension ; and this 
privilege was used by so many and with such unspar- 
ing freedom that only superhuman patience could 
have endured it all. There are men now living who 
would to-day read with amazement, if not regret, what 
they then ventured to say or write to him. But Lin- 
coln repelled no one whom he believed to speak to 
him in good faith and with patriotic purpose. No 
good advice would go unheeded. No candid criticism 
would offend him. No honest opposition, while it 
might pain him, would produce a lasting alienation of 
feeling between him and the opponent. It may truly 
be said that few men in power have ever been ex- 
posed to more daring attempts to direct their course, 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY, 61 

to severer censure of their acts, and to more cruel 
misrepresentation of their motives. And all this he 
met with that good-natured humor peculiarly his own, 
and with untiring effort to see the right and to im- 
press it upon those who differed from him. The con- 
versations he had and the correspondence he carried 
on upon matters of public interest, not only with men 
in official position, but with private citizens, were al- 
most unceasing, and in a large number of public let- 
ters, written ostensibly to meetings, or committees, or 
persons of importance, he addressed himself directly 
to the popular mind. Most of these letters stand 
among the finest monuments of our political litera- 
ture. Thus he presented the singular spectacle of a 
President who, in the midst of a great civil war, with 
unprecedented duties weighing upon him, was con- 
stantly in person debating the great features of his 
policy with the people. 

While in this manner he exercised an ever-increas- 
ing influence upon the popular understanding, his 
sympathetic nature endeared him more and more to 
the popular heart. In vain did journals and speakers 
of the opposition represent him as a light-minded 
trifler, who amused himself with frivolous story-tell- 
ing and coarse jokes, while the blood of the people 
was flowing in streams. The people knew that the 
man at the head of affairs, on whose haggard face the 
twinkle of humor so frequently changed into an ex- 
pression of profoundest sadness, was more than any 
other deeply distressed by the suffering he witnessed ; 
that he felt the pain of every wound that was inflicted 
on the battlefield, and the anguish of every woman or 
child who had lost husband or father ; that whenever 
he could he was eager to alleviate sorrow, and that 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

his mercy was never implored in vain. They looked 
to him as one who was with them and of them in all 
their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, — who 
laughed with them and wept with them ; and as his 
heart was theirs, so their hearts turned to him. His 
popularity was far different from that of Washington, 
who was revered with awe, or that of Jackson, the 
unconquerable hero, for whom party enthusiasm never 
grew weary of shouting. To Abraham Lincoln the 
people became bound by a genuine sentimental attach- 
ment. It was not a matter of respect, or confidence, 
or party pride, for this feeling spread far beyond 
the boundary lines of his party ; it was an affair of 
the heart, independent of mere reasoning. When the 
soldiers in the field or their folks at home spoke of 
" Father Abraham," there was no cant in it. They 
felt that their President was really caring for them as 
a father would, and that they could go to him, every 
one of them, as they would go to a father, and talk to 
him of what troubled them, sure to find a willing ear 
and tender sympathy. Thus, their President, and his 
cause, and his endeavors, and his success gradually 
became to them almost matters of family concern. 
And this popularity carried him triumphantly through 
the presidential election of 1864, in spite of an opi3o- 
sition within his own party which at first seemed very 
formidable. 

Many of the radical anti-slavery men were never 
quite satisfied with Lincoln's ways of meeting the 
problems of the time. They were very earnest and 
mostly very able men, who had positive ideas as to 
" how this rebellion should be put down." They 
would not recognize the necessity of measuring the 
steps of the government according to the progress of 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 63 

opinion among the plain people. They criticised 
Lincoln's cautious management as irresolute, halting, 
lacking in definite purpose and in energy ; he should 
not have delayed emancipation so long ; he should not 
have confided important commands to men of doubt- 
ful views as to slavery ; he should have authorized 
military commanders to set the slaves free as they 
went on ; he dealt too leniently with unsuccessful 
generals ; he should have put down all factious oppo- 
sition with a strong hand instead of trying to pacify 
it ; he should have given the people accomplished 
facts instead of arguing with them, and so on. It is 
true, these criticisms were not always entirely un- 
founded. Lincoln's policy had, with the virtues of 
democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which 
in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to 
dei3rive governmental action of the necessary vigor ; 
and his kindness of heart, his disposition always to 
respect the feelings of others, frequently made him 
recoil from anything like severity, even when severity 
was urgently called for. But many of his radical 
critics have since then revised their judgment suffi- 
ciently to admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the 
whole, the wisest and safest ; that a policy of heroic 
methods, while it has sometimes accomplished great 
results, could in a democracy like ours be maintained 
only by constant success ; that it would have quickly 
broken down under the weight of disaster ; that it 
might have been successful from the start, had the 
Union, at the beginning of the conflict, had its Grants 
and Shermans and Sheridans, its Farraguts and Por- 
tersf fully matured at the head of its forces ; but that, 
as the great commanders had to be evolved slowly 
from the developments of the war, constant success 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

could not be counted upon, and it was best to follow 
a policy wliich was in friendly contact with the popu- 
lar force, and therefore more fit to stand the trial 
of misfortune on the battlefield. But at that period 
they thought differently, and their dissatisfaction with 
Lincoln's doings was greatly increased by the steps he 
took toward the reconstruction of rebel States then 
partially in possession of the Union forces. 

In December, 1863, Lincoln issued an amnesty 
proclamation, offering pardon to all implicated in the 
rebellion, with certain specified exceptions, on condi- 
tion of their taking and maintaining an oath to sup- 
port the Constitution and obey the laws of the United 
States and the proclamations of the President with 
regard to slaves ; and also promising that when, in 
any of the rebel States, a number of citizens equal to 
one tenth of the voters in 1860 should reestablish a 
state government in conformity with the oath above 
mentioned, such should be recognized by the Execu- 
tive as the true government of the State. The pro- 
clamation seemed at first to be received with general 
favor. But soon another scheme of reconstruction, 
much more stringent in its provisions, was put for- 
ward in the House of Kepresentatives by Henry 
Winter Davis. Benjamin Wade championed it in 
the Senate. It passed in the closing moments of the 
session in July, 1864, and Lincoln, instead of making 
it a law by his signature, embodied the text of it in 
a proclamation as a plan of reconstruction worthy of 
being earnestly considered. The differences of opin- 
ion concerning this subject had only intensified the 
feeling against Lincoln which had long been nursed 
among the radicals, and some of them openly declared 
their purpose of resisting his reelection to the presi- 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 65 

dency. Similar sentiments were manifested by the 
advanced anti-slavery men of Missouri, who, in their 
hot faction-fi2:ht with the " conservatives " of that 
State, had not received from Lincoln the active sup- 
port they demanded. Still another class of Union 
men, mainly in the East, gravely shook their heads 
when considering the question whether Lincoln should 
be reelected. They were those who cherished in their 
minds an ideal of statesmanship and of personal bear- 
ing in high office with which, in their opinion, Lin- 
coln's individuality was much out of accord. They 
were shocked when they heard him cap an argument 
upon grave affairs of state with a story about " a man 
out in Sangamon County," — a story, to be sure, 
strikingly clinching his point, but sadly lacking in 
dignity. They could not understand the man who 
was capable, in opening a cabinet meeting, of reading 
to his secretaries a funny chapter from a recent book 
of Artemus Ward, with which in an unoccupied mo- 
ment he had relieved his care-burdened mind, and who 
then solemnly informed the executive council that he 
had vowed in his heart to issue a proclamation eman- 
cipating the slaves as soon as God blessed the Union 
arms with another victory. They were alarmed at the 
weakness of a President who would indeed resist the 
urgent remonstrances of statesmen against his policy, 
but could not resist the prayer of an old woman for 
the pardon of a soldier who was sentenced to be 
shot for desertion. Such men, mostly sincere and 
ardent patriots, not only wished, but earnestly set to 
work, to prevent Lincoln's re nomination. Not a few 
of them actually believed, in 1863, that, if the na- 
tional convention of the Union party were held then, 
Lincoln would not be supported by the delegation of 



m ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

a single State. But when the convention met at 
Baltimore, in June, 1864, the voice of the people was 
heard. On the first ballot Lincoln received the votes 
of the delegations from all the States except Missouri ; 
and even the Missourians turned over their votes to 
him before the result of the ballot was declared. 

But even after his renomination, the opposition to 
Lincoln within the ranks of the Union party did not 
subside. A convention, called by the dissatisfied radi- 
cals in Missouri, and favored by men of a similar way 
of thinking in other States, had been held already 
in May, and had nominated as its candidate for the 
presidency General Fremont. He, indeed, did not 
attract a strong following, but opposition movements 
from different quarters appeared more formidable. 
Henry Winter Davis and Benjamin Wade assailed 
Lincoln in a flaming manifesto. Other Union men, 
of undoubted patriotism and high standing, persuaded 
themselves, and sought to persuade the people, that 
Lincoln's renomination was ill advised and dangerous 
to the Union cause. As the Democrats had put off 
their convention until the 29th of August, the Union 
party had, during the larger part of the summer, 
no opposing candidate and platform to attack, and 
the political campaign languished. Neither were the 
tidings from the theatre of war of a cheering charac- 
ter. The terrible losses suffered by Grant's army in 
the battles of the Wilderness spread general gloom. 
Sherman seemed for a while to be in a precarious 
position before Atlanta. The opposition to Lincoln 
within the Union party grew louder in its complaints 
and discouraging predictions. Earnest demands were 
heard that his candidacy should be withdrawn. Lin- 
coln himself, not knowing how strongly the masses 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 67 

were attached to him, was haunted by dark forebod- 
ings of defeat. Then the scene suddenly changed as 
if by magic. The Democrats, in their national con- 
vention, declared the war a failure, demanded, sub- 
stantially, peace at any price, and nominated on such 
a platform General McClellan as their candidate. 
Their convention had hardly adjourned when the 
capture of Atlanta gave a new aspect to the military 
situation. It was like a sun-ray bursting through a 
dark cloud. The rank and file of the Union party 
rose with rapidly growing enthusiasm. The song 
" We are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand strong," resounded all over the land. Long 
before the decisive day arrived, the result was beyond 
doubt, and Lincoln was reelected President by over- 
whelming majorities. The election over, even his 
severest critics found themselves forced to admit that 
Lincoln was the only possible candidate for the Union 
party in 1864, and that neither political combinations 
nor campaign speeches, nor even victories in the field, 
were needed to insure his success. The plain people 
had all the while been satisfied with Abraham Lincoln : 
they confided in him ; they loved him ; they felt them- 
selves near to him ; they saw personified in him the 
cause of Union and freedom ; and they went to the 
ballot-box for him in their strength. 

The hour of triumph called out the characteristic 
impulses of his nature. The opposition within the 
Union party had stung him to the quick. Now he 
had his opponents before him, baffled and humiliated. 
Not a moment did he lose to stretch out the hand of 
friendship to all. " Now that the election is over," 
he said, in response to a serenade, " may not all, hav- 
ing a common interest, reunite in a common effort to 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

save our common country ? For my own part, I have 
striven, and will strive, to place no obstacle in the 
way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly 
planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am 
deej)ly sensible to the high compliment of a reelec- 
tion, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other 
man may be pained or disappointed by the result. 
May I ask those who were with me to join with me in 
the same spirit toward those who were against me ? " 
This was Abraham Lincoln's character as tested in 
the furnace of prosperity. 

The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended. 
Sherman was irresistibly carrying the Union flag 
through the South. Grant had his iron hand upon the 
ramparts of Richmond. The days of the Confederacy 
were evidently numbered. Only the last blow re- 
mained to be struck. Then Lincoln's second inaugu- 
ration came, and with it his second inaugural address. 
Lincoln's famous " Gettysburg speech " ^ has been 
much and justly admired. But far greater, as well as 
far more characteristic, was that inaugural in which he 
poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his 
great soul. It had all the solemnity of a father's last 
admonition and blessing to his children before he lay 
down to die. These were its closing words : " Fondly 
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty 
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by 
the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another 
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 

1 Both the second inaugural address and the Gettysburg 
speech are printed in No. 32, Riverside Literature series. 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 69 

years ago, so still it must be said, ' The judgments of 
the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With 
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness 
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us 
strive to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the 
nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne 
the battle, and for his widow and his orphan ; to do 
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

This was like a sacred poem. No American Pre- 
sident had ever spoken words like these to the Ameri- 
can people. America never had a President who 
found such words in the depth of his heart. 

Now followed the closing scenes of the war. The 
Southern armies fought bravely to the last, but all in 
vain. Richmond fell. Lincoln himself entered the 
city on foot, accompanied only by a few officers and a 
squad of sailors who had rowed him ashore from the 
flotilla in the James River, a negro picked up on the 
way serving as a guide. Never had the world seen 
a more modest conqueror and a more characteristic 
triumphal procession, — no army with banners and 
drums, only a throng of those who had been slaves, 
hastily run together, escorting the victorious chief 
into the capital of the vanquished foe. We are told 
that they pressed around him, kissed his hands and his 
garments, and shouted and danced for joy, while tears 
ran down the President's care-furrowed cheeks. 

A few days more brought the surrender of Lee's 
army, and peace was assured. The people of the 
North were wild with joy. Everywhere festive guns 
were booming, bells pealing, the churches ringing with 
tlianksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the 
thoroughfares, when suddenly the news flashed over 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the land that Abraham Lincoln had been murdered. 
The people were stunned by the blow. Then a wail 
of sorrow went up such as America had never heard 
before. Thousands of Northern households grieved 
as if they had lost their dearest member. Many a 
Southern man cried out in his heart that his people 
had been robbed of their best friend in their humilia- 
tion and distress, when Abraham Lincoln was struck 
down. It was as if the tender affection which his 
countrymen bore him had inspired all nations with 
a common sentiment. All civilized mankind stood 
mourning around the coffin of the dead President. 
Many of those, here and abroad, who not long before 
had ridiculed and reviled him were among the first to 
hasten on with their flowers of eulogy, and in that 
universal chorus of lamentation and praise there was 
not a voice that did not tremble with genuine emotion. 
Never since Washington's death had there been such 
unanimity of judgment as to a man's virtues and great- 
ness ; and even Washington's death, although his 
name was held in greater reverence, did not touch so 
sympathetic a chord in the people's hearts. 

Nor can it be said that this was owing to the tragic 
character of Lincoln's end. It is true, the death of 
this gentlest and most merciful of rulers by the hand 
of a mad fanatic was well apt to exalt him beyond his 
merits in the estimation of those who loved him, and 
to make his renown the object of peculiarly tender 
solicitude. But it is also true that the verdict pro- 
nounced upon him in those days has been affected 
little by time, and that historical inquiry has served 
rather to increase than to lessen the appreciation of 
his virtues, his abilities, his services. Giving the full- 
est measure of credit to his great ministers, — to Sew- 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 71 

ard for his conduct of foreign affairs, to Chase for the 
management of the finances under terrible difficulties, 
to Stanton for the performance of his tremendous task 
as war secretary, — and readily acknowledging that 
without the skill and fortitude of the great command- 
ers, and the heroism of the soldiers and sailors under 
them, success could not have been achieved, the histo- 
rian still finds that Lincoln's judgment and will were 
by no means governed by those around him ; that the 
most important steps were owing to his initiative; 
that his was the deciding and directing mind ; and 
that it was preeminently he whose sagacity and whose 
character enlisted for the administration in its strug- 
gles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support 
of the people. It is found, even, that his judgment 
on military matters was astonishingly acute, and that 
the advice and instructions he gave to the generals 
commanding in the field would not seldom have done 
honor to the ablest of them. History, therefore, with- 
out overlooking or palliating or excusing any of his 
shortcomings or mistakes, continues to place him fore- 
most among the saviours of the Union and the libera- 
tors of the slave. More than that, it awards to him 
the merit of having accomj^lished what but few polit- 
ical philosophers would have recognized as possible, — 
of leading the republic through four years of furious 
civil conflict without any serious detriment to its free 
institutions. 

He was, indeed, while President, violently de- 
nounced by the opposition as a tyrant and a usurper, 
for having gone beyond his constitutional jDowers in 
authorizing or permitting the temporary suppression 
of newspapers, and in wantonly suspending the writ 
of habeas corpus and resorting to arbitrary arrests. 



72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Nobody should be blamed who, when such things are 
done, in good faith and from patriotic motives pro- 
tests against them. In a republic, arbitrary stretches 
of power, even when demanded by necessity, should 
never be permitted to pass without a protest on the 
one hand, and without an apology on the other. It 
is well they did not so pass during our civil war. That 
arbitrary measures were resorted to, is true. That 
they were resorted to most sparingly, and only when 
the government thought them absolutely required by 
the safety of the republic, will now hardly be denied. 
But certain it is that the history of the world does 
not furnish a single example of a government passing 
through so tremendous a crisis as our civil war was 
with so small a record of arbitrary acts, and so little 
interference with the ordinary course of law outside the 
field of military operations. No American President 
ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into 
Lincoln's hands. It is to be hoped that no American 
President ever will have to be intrusted with such 
power again. But no man was ever intrusted with it 
to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they 
proved to be to Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous 
care he endeavored, even under the most trying cir- 
cumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional 
limitations of his authority ; and whenever the bound- 
ary became indistinct, or when the dangers of the situ- 
ation forced him to cross it, he was equally careful to 
mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only 
by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that 
they might not pass into history as precedents for 
similar acts in time of peace. It is an unquestiona- 
ble fact that during the reconstruction period which 
followed the war, more things were done capable of 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 73 

serving as dangerous precedents than during the war 
itself. Thus it may truly be said of him not only that 
under his guidance the republic was saved from dis- 
ruption and the country was purified of the blot of 
slavery, but that, during the stormiest and most peril- 
ous crisis in our history, he so conducted the govern- 
ment and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as 
to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all 
things that concern the rights and liberties of the cit- 
izen. He understood well the nature of the problem. 
In his first message to Congress he defined it in 
admirably pointed language: "Must a government 
be of necessity too strong for the liberties of its own 
people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? 
Is there in all republics this inherent weakness?" 
This question he answered in the name of the great 
American republic, as no man could have answered 
it better, with a triumphant " No." 

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the 
right moment for his fame. However that may be, 
he Imd, at the time of his death, certainly not ex- 
hausted his usefulness to his country. He was proba- 
bly the only man who could have guided the nation 
through the perplexities of the reconstruction period 
in such a manner as to prevent in the work of peace 
the revival of the passions of the war. He would 
indeed not have escaped serious controversy as to 
details of policy ; but he could have weathered it far 
better than any other statesman of his time, for his 
prestige with the active politicians had been immensely 
strengthened by his triumphant reelection ; and what 
is more important, he would have been supported by 
the confidence of the victorious Northern people that 
he would do all to secure the safety of the Union and 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the rights of the emancipated negro, and at the same 
time by the confidence of the defeated Southern peo- 
ple that nothing would be done by him from motives 
of vindictiveness, or of unreasonable fanaticism, or of 
a selfish party spirit. " With malice toward none, 
with charity for all," the foremost of the victors would 
have personified in himself the genius of reconcilia- 
tion. 

He might have rendered the country a great ser- 
vice in another direction. A few days after the fall 
of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the crowd of 
office-seekers besieging his door. "Look at that," 
said he. " Now we have conquered the rebellion, but 
here you see something that may become more danger- 
ous to this republic than the rebellion itself." It is 
true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we 
now call civil service reform principles. He used the 
patronage of the government in many cases avowedly 
to reward party work, in many others to form combi- 
nations and to produce political effects advantageous 
to the Union cause, and in still others simply to 
put the right man into the right place. But in his 
endeavors to strengthen the Union cause, and in his 
search for able and useful men for public duties, he 
frequently went beyond the limits of his party, and 
gradually accustomed himself to the thought that, 
while party service had its value, considerations of 
the public interest were, as to appointments to office, 
of far greater consequence. Moreover, there had 
been such a mingling of different political elements 
in support of the Union during the civil war that 
Lincoln, standing at the head of that temporarily 
united motley mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow 
sense of the term, a party man. And as he became 



SCHURZ'S ESSAY. 75 

strongly impressed with the dangers brought upon the 
republic by the use of public offices as party spoils, it 
is by no means improbable that had he survived the 
all-absorbing crisis and found time to turn to other 
objects, one of the most important reforms of later 
days would have been pioneered by his powerful au- 
thority. This was not to be. But the measure of his 
achievements was full enough for immortality. 

To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has 
already become a half-mythical figure, which, in the 
haze of historic distance, grows to more and more 
heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of 
outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot 
of popular heroes ; but the Lincoln legend will be 
more than ordinarily apt to become fanciful, as his 
individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous qual- 
ities and forces in a character at the same time grand 
and most lovable, was so unique, and his career so 
abounding in startling contrasts. As the state of 
society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes 
away, the world will read with increasing wonder of 
the man who, not only of the humblest origin, but 
remaining the simplest and most unpretending of citi- 
zens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented 
in our history ; who was the gentlest and most peace- 
loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer 
without a pang in his own breast, and suddenly found 
himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of 
our wars ; who wielded the power of government when 
stern resolution and relentless force were the order of 
the day, and then won and ruled the popular mind 
and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature ; 
who was a cautious conservative by temperament and 
mental habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

social revolution of our time ; who, preserving his 
homely speech and rustic manner even in the most 
conspicuous position of that period, drew upon him- 
self the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the 
soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty 
and grandeur ; who, in his heart the best friend of 
the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy 
fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy ; who, while 
in power, was beyond measure lampooned and ma- 
ligned by sectional passion and an excited party spirit, 
and around whose bier friend and foe gathered to 
praise him — which they have since never ceased to 
do — as one of the greatest of Americans and the best 
of men. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

REMARKS AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES HELD IN CON- 
CORD, APRIL 19, 1865. 

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

We meet under the gloom of a calamity which 
darkens down over the minds of good men in all civil 
society, as the fearful tidings travel over sea, over 
land, from country to country, like the shadow of an 
uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history 
is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any 
death has caused so much pain to mankind as this 
has caused, or will cause, on its announcement ; and 
this, not so much because nations are by modern arts 
brought so closely together, as because of the mysteri- 
ous hopes and fears which, in the present day, are con- 
nected with the name and institutions of America. 

In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck 
dumb, and saw at first only deep below deep, as he 
meditated on the ghastly blow. And perhaps, at this 
hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the 
President sets forward on its long march through 
mourning States, on its way to his home in Illinois, 
we might well be silent, and suffer the awful voices of 
the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first despair 
was brief : the man was not so to be mourned. He 
was the most active and hopeful of men ; and his 
work had not perished : but acclamations of praise 
for the task he had accomplished burst out into a 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

song of triumph, which even tears for his death can- 
not keep down. 

The President stood before us as a man of the peo- 
ple. He was thoroughly American, had never crossed 
the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity 
or French dissipation ; a quite native, aboriginal man, 
as an acorn from the oak ; no aping of foreigners, no 
frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working 
on a farm, a flatboat-man, a captain in the Black 
Hawk war, a country lawyer, a representative in the 
rural legislature of Illinois ; — on such modest foun- 
dations the broad structure of his fame was laid. 
How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he 
came to his place. All of us remember — it is only 
a history of five or six years — the surprise and the 
disappointment of the country at his first nomination 
by the convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in 
the culmination of his good fame, was the favorite of 
the Eastern States. And when the new and compara- 
tively unknown name of Lincoln was announced 
(notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of 
that convention), we heard the result coldly and 
sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputa- 
tion, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times ; 
and men naturally talked of the chances in politics 
as incalculable. But it turned out not to be chance. 
The profound good opinion which the people of Illi- 
nois and of the West had conceived of him, and which 
they had imparted to their colleagues, that they also 
might justify themselves to their constituents at home, 
was not rash, though they did not begin to know the 
riches of his worth. 

A plain man of the people, an extraordinary for- 
tune attended him. He offered no shining qualities 



EMERSON'S REMARKS. 79 

at the first encounter ; he did not offend by superior- 
ity. He had a face and manner which disarmed sus- 
picion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed 
good will. He was a man without vices. He had 
a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for 
him to obey. Then he had what farmers call a 
long head ; was excellent in working out the sum for 
himself; in arguing his case and convincing you 
fairly and firmly. Then it turned out that he was a 
great worker ; had prodigious faculty of performance ; 
worked easily. A good worker is so rare ; everybody 
has some disabling quality. In a host of young men 
that start together and promise so many brilliant 
leaders for the next age, each fails on trial ; one by 
bad health, one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or 
lethargy, or an ugly temper, — each has some dis- 
qualifying fault that throws him out of the career. 
But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persist- 
ent, all right for labor, and liked nothing so well. 

Then he had a vast good nature, which made him 
tolerant and accessible to all ; fair minded, leaning to 
the claim of the petitioner ; affable, and not sensible 
to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid to 
him when President would have brought to any one 
else. And how this good nature became a noble 
humanity, in many a tragic case which the events of 
the war brought to him, every one will remember ; 
and with what increasing tenderness he dealt when a 
whole race was thrown on his compassion. The poor 
negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, " Massa 
Linkum am eberywhere." 

Then his broad good humor, running easily into 
jocular talk, in which he delighted and in which he 
excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled 



80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

him to keep his secret ; to meet every kind of man 
and every rank in society ; to take off the edge of the 
severest decisions ; to mask his own purpose and 
sound his companion ; and to catch with true instinct 
the temper of every company he addressed. And, 
more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in 
anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, 
good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven 
brain against rancor and insanity. 

He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so 
disguised as pleasantries that it is certain they had no 
reputation at first but as jests ; and only later, by the 
very acceptance and adoption they find in the mouths 
of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I 
am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facil- 
ity of printing, he would have become mythological 
in a very few^ years, like ^sop or Pilpay, or one of 
the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. 
But the weight and penetration of many passages 
in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by 
the very closeness of their application to the moment, 
are destined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant 
definitions ; what unerring common sense ; what fore- 
sight ; and, on great occasion, what lofty, and more 
than national, what humane tone ! His brief speech 
at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words 
on any recorded occasion. This, and one other Amer- 
ican speech, that of John Brown to the court that 
tried him, and a part of Kossuth's speech at Birming- 
ham, can only be compared with each other, and with 
no fourth. 

His occupying the chair of State was a triumph of 
the good sense of mankind, and of the public con- 
science. This middle-class country had got a middle- 



EMERSON'S REMARKS. 81 

class President, at last. Yes, in manners and sympa- 
thies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. 
This man grew according to the need. His mind 
mastered the problem of the day; and as the pro- 
blem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely 
was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears 
and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, 
this man wrought incessantly with all his might and 
all his honesty, laboring to find what the people 
wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said 
there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a 
man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of 
resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times 
have allowed no state secrets ; the nation has been in 
such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that 
no secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and 
we know all that befell. 

Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the 
war. Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no 
fair-weather sailor ; the new pilot was hurried to the 
helm in a tornado. In four years, — four years of 
battle-days, — his endurance, his fertility of resources, 
his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found 
wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even 
temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a 
heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is 
the true history of the American people in his time. 
Step by step he walked before them ; slow with their 
slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true 
representative of this continent; an entirely public 
man ; father of his country, the pulse of twenty mil- 
lions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their 
minds articulated by his tongue. 

Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Hou- 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

braken's portraits of British kings and worthies is 
engraved under those who have suffered at the block, 
adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who 
does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast 
the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burn- 
ing into glory around the victim ? Far happier this 
fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have 
watched the decay of his own faculties ; to have seen 
— perhaps even he — the proverbial ingratitude of 
statesmen ; to have seen mean men preferred. Had 
he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise 
that ever man made to his fellow men, — the practical 
abolition of slavery ? He had seen Tennessee, Mis- 
souri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had 
seen Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond surren- 
dered ; had seen the main army of the rebellion lay 
down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion 
of Canada, England, and France. Only Washington 
can compare with him in fortune. 

And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding 
of the web, that he had reached the term ; that this 
heroic deliverer could no longer serve us ; that the 
rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what 
remained to be done required new and uncommitted 
hands, — a new spirit born out of the ashes of the 
war ; and that Heaven, wishing to show the world a 
completed benefactor, shall make him serve his coun- 
try even more by his death than by his life ? Nations, 
like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. 
" The kindness of kings consists in justice and 
strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous 
foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its 
enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted 
firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in the 
next ages. 



EMERSON'S REMARKS. 83 

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful 
Genius which ruled in the affairs of nations ; which, 
with a slow but stern justice, carried forward the for- 
tunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single 
offenders or offending families, and securing at last 
the firm prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It 
was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis. There 
is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, 
which makes little account of time, little of one 
generation or race, makes no account of disasters, 
conquers alike by what is called defeat or by what 
is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, 
crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains 
the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice 
of everything which resists the moral laws of the 
world. It makes its own instruments, creates the 
man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his 
genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every 
race its own talent, and ordains that only that race 
which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall 
endure. 



THE EMANCIPATION GROUP. 

BY JOHN GEEENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to 
the city a duplicate of the Freedman's Memorial 
Statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington, after 
a design by Thomas Ball. The group, which stands 
in Park Square, represents the figure of a slave, from 
whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling 
in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The verses which 
follow were written for the unveiling of the statue, 
December 9, 1879. 

Amidst thy sacred effigies 

Of old renown give place, 
O city, Freedom-loved ! to his 

Whose hand unchained a race. 

Take the worn frame, that rested not 

Save in a martyr's grave ; 
The care-lined face, that none forgot. 

Bent to the kneeling slave. 

Let man be free ! The mighty word 

He spake was not his own ; 
An impulse from the Highest stirred 

These chiselled lips alone. 

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide. 
Along his pathway ran, 



THE EMANCIPATION GROUP. 85 

And Nature, through his voice, denied 
The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 

Saw peril, strife, and pain ; 
His was the nation's sacrifice. 

And ours the priceless gain. 

O symbol of God's will on earth 

As it is done above ! 
Bear witness to the cost and worth 

Of justice and of love. 

Stand in thy place and testify 

To coming ages long, 
That truth is stronger than a lie, 

And righteousness than wrong. 



FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

CITY OF BOSTON, JUNE 1, 1865. 

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

CHORAL : " Luther'' s Judgment Hymn." 

O Thou of soul and sense and breath 

The ever-present Giver, 
Unto thy mighty Angel, Death, 

All flesh thou dost deliver ; 
"What most we cherish we resign, 
For life and death alike are thine. 

Who reignest Lord forever ! 

Our hearts lie buried in the dust 

With him so true and tender. 
The patriot's stay, the people's trust. 

The shield of the offender ; 
Yet every murmuring voice is still. 
As, bowing to thy sovereign will, 

Our best-loved we surrender. 

Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold 

This martyr generation, 
Which thou, through trials manifold, 

Art showing thy salvation ! 
Oh, let the blood by murder spilt 
Wash out thy stricken children's guilt, 

And sanctify our nation ! 



IN MEMORY OF LINCOLN. 87 

Be thou thy orphaned Israel's friend, 

Forsake thy people never, 
In One our broken Many blend 

That none again may sever ! 
Hear us, O Father, while we raise 
With trembling lips our song of praise, 

And bless thy name forever ! 



EXTRACT FEOM ODE 

RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION, 
JULY 21, 1865. 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



Whither leads the path 
To ampler fates that leads ? 
Not down through flowery meads, 

To reap an aftermath 
Of youth's vainglorious weeds ; 
But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. 
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath. 
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 

Dreams in its easeful sheath ; 
But some day the live coal behind the thought. 
Whether from Baal's stone obscene. 
Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought, 
Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught. 
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 



LOWELL'S ODE. 89 

Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men : 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
And cries reproachful : " Was it, then, my praise, 
And not myself was loved ? Prove now thy truth ; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! " 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 

So bountiful is Fate ; 

But then to stand beside her. 

When craven churls deride her. 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God's plan 

And measure of a stalwart man, 

Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
Who stands self -poised on manhood's solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 

VI. 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head. 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn. 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 

Nature, they say, doth dote. 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan. 

Repeating us by rote : 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth. 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 
They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 
thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothing of Europe here. 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still. 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will ; 
Here was a type of the true elder race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to 
face. 
I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
And some innative weakness there must be 



LOWELL'S ODE. 91 

In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide. 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

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